


a history of things unsaid

by circa1220bce



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Community: norsekink, M/M, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Pseudo-Incest, mute!Loki, sö mäny ümläüts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:14:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circa1220bce/pseuds/circa1220bce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kings and Princes of Jötunheimr gain immortality and a ruthlessness unmatched by any other by having their hearts consigned to the Casket of Ancient Winters. Odin, thanks to the Well of Mímir, knew such a ceremony would leave the Casket vulnerable for the taking. Odin brought the forces of Asgard to Jötunheimr on the day Loki's heart was to be sealed away, disrupting the ceremony half way through.</p>
<p>When Loki learns that he has only ever lived with half of a heart, he sets to finish what was begun. But events don't proceed quite as he plans...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on two norsekink prompts, found [here](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/4781.html?thread=15240365#t15240365) and [here](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/7418.html?thread=15530746#t15530746).

_Now_

Empty settlements are ubiquitous on Jötunheimr. That is, the ruins of them are. As Loki flits between once-cities, searching for a temple to his liking, he encounters in each a spectacle of broken, half-leveled buildings, uneven walls of cracked ice – vast crevasses in the ground and over everything a thin covering of ash. Whatever restorations managed, whatever number of frost giants recovered since the great war with Asgard, Loki undid all and then inflicted damage twice as terrible and cut down a number twice as devastating in the few moments he'd forced the Bifröst's gaze over Jötunheimr's vast blue plains. Loki wants to build a towering pyre and weep before it in horrified grief while its flames lick the sky. He wants to knock over such a pyre and avidly watch all of this despicable and despised realm melt and burn.

The current reconstruction and re-population goes slowly without their Casket of Ancient Winters, but progress is yet apparent. Loki avoids the laborious up-cropping of fresh buildings, the tribal meetings wherein hierarchy is being redrawn in blood, and most particularly Helblindi sitting straight-spined on Loki's throne. When Loki presses a bare hand against the ground, he can hear the chatter between tribes and individual Jötnar; vague plans spanning for centuries, the hushed but ever present grumblings for revenge, and more mundane aches and groans. Winter-song is an imprecise means of communication, utilizing impressions over words and efficiency over eloquence. But unless warmongering Aesir arrive uninvited on their lands and demand their attention in the spoken All-Tongue, it suffices.

Hours or days later, as Loki wanders yet another far-off settlement, he feels the muted pulse of a holy place. Meters below the ground he finds the caved-in entrance. Ymir himself may have walked it for how ancient the brittle air feels against Loki's skin. There is damage to the temple, although the crooked beams still hold the ceiling against centuries of new snow and the mosaic floor is well preserved, but the damage is old – older than Loki's doing, older than Odin's, and caused by abandonment rather than assault. The winter-song is faint for leagues in every direction, and every shadowed corner Loki checks is empty of spying eyes. 

The ice glows wherever Loki presses his palm.

Yes. This temple will do.

The pity is that Loki would have left well enough alone. He'd at last dismissed Jötunheimr as a means of redemption, if ever his bitter thoughts sweetened enough to yearn for it anew. He'd come to some strange, uneasy peace within himself – was content to while his time wreaking havoc that fell far short of genocide. He'd found new allies who cared not of the royal machinations of a distant realm and who appreciated Loki's cleverness, did not despair his magics. It was a tightrope existence, yes, but one Loki could've walked for eons, should no new weight seek to unbalance him. 

But that is then.

That is before Latveria and the children's book hidden in a castle library, a book that changed _everything_. That day Victor had been his usual tedious presence, engaged in some droning lecture on his growing doubt that Loki shared his commitments. There'd been some disparaging of Loki's frequent disappearances, the expected bemoaning of Loki's overly-complicated plans in which Loki too quickly loses interest. Or that may have been a previous lecture, or some combination of several; Loki's attention was intermittent. Victor had been mid-word when Loki took his leave, had followed Loki through the castle hallways still lecturing, and had only allowed himself to be interrupted when Loki locked the library door in Victor's face.

Calmly – for none save the stretchy scientist ever seemed able to rattle him – Victor had said, “You are being purposefully unreasonable to irritate me.”

Loki had answered, “Only in equal measure to how you bore me, darling.”

And there, hidden in a bookcase underneath a stack of ancient mythology, Loki found it. 

The temple thoroughly warded against any outside presence, Loki carefully calls upon the Casket of Ancient Winters. He sets it on the broken stump of a central pedestal, the top of which would have once loomed five feet over his head and now is level with his eyesight when he kneels before it. Next to him, he places the book. 

It is Vanir in origin, each thick page covered in flowing, brightly colored illustrations that tell a series of tales without a single word of text. There is magics in the ink; when he traces fingers along the lines phrases come unbidden into his mind. How it came to be on Midgard Loki has no idea and little interest in knowing. He has, since the book's discovery, been interested in little else but the last story, which tells the tale of how the golden realm defeated the frozen one. 

When Loki traces again the first illustration, of a glowing box held by a great, monstrous figure with deep red eyes, Loki thinks and hears and knows,

_The ice giant king is so feared because he has no heart._

He dreams these days in illustrations. How could he not? The ink should be faded for how often in the past few months Loki has flipped through the pages and traced the drawings. The story of an ancient ritual and a special relic buried safely in the ice realm's belly, its secret known only by the ice realm's kings. The relic lends ever-winter to the realm, and ever-strength to its people, and ever-life to its ruler. In exchange, when a king-to-be is born, the king-who-is calls upon the relic and consigns to it the king-to-be's heart, for only a being with no heart could be cold enough to be worthy of presiding over the frozen realm. 

But a prophet-well whispered this secret to the golden king, the story tells, and the golden king schemed to make this strength into a weakness. Only the ice giant king can call upon the relic, and the relic can only be called upon when an heir is born. So the golden king waited and waited and waited until an ice king-who-is bore a child and prepared in secrecy for the ceremony, unaware that the golden king was meanwhile preparing for war. 

At this point in the tale the illustrations blur with the sudden sense-knowledge of once being a small thing in Laufey-king's great hands. Loki remembers the reaching feel of his ancestors' long arms, dead fingers tapping at his tiny chest in time with what the Casket demanded, hungry. Hears the startling war-cries too close to the temple and Laufey-king's snarl. He remembers being left on the cold floor with only the Casket's shrieks for company and remembers his own tears, because when a king returned to him it was not the one who left him there.

 _This is how the golden king finally defeated the wicked ice giants_ , the story concludes. _This is why those foolish enough to lose their heart will be always defeated by those who cultivate and treasure strong ones._

But the story gets one detail wrong. This Vanir author may know many things he should not, may have sight that sees what escapes even Heimdall's gaze, but there is this one. Little. Detail that Loki knows and he does not. Before stealing the relic, the golden king slays the king-to-be.

But Odin All-Father did no such thing. Odin All-Father is not so merciful as the Vanir's golden king.

Strange, that Loki only ever wondered at the unfairness of Thor being twice-bright, never considering that it is because he is only half-dim. Strange, how clear it is the reason for the misshaped emptiness inside him. Not a gaping emptiness, no, but an emptiness that does not gape wide enough. Loki erred in fearing himself unworthy of the warmth of Asgard's crown, when he should have feared himself unworthy of the chill of the crown he was always meant to wear. 

No wonder the kings of Jötunheimr are so cold. No wonder that Loki is never cold enough.

And now at last an escape from the circular existence he'd endured since his fall. Striking Midgard, being humiliated by her foolish heroes, flitting between realms while he recovers his strength and his pride. Sometimes perusing Nidavellir's markets for dwarvish metals, or trading ballads with the dökkálfar, or meditating and reading stolen Midgardian literature in the heat of Múspellsheimr's caves. And then back to green earth, clashing weapons with the Avengers on battlefield when Loki should be striking sideways with poison and mistruths. But if Loki struck from the shadows, he would have long ago been the victor against mere mortals. So why choose over and over to disadvantage himself? Why always stay his hand from a killing blow? No wonder he would've tolerated this tightrope forever, pulled back and forth between wants that cannot harmoniously coexist. 

No wonder Loki was cast so swiftly from Thor's bed and was so easily replaced in Thor's heart ...

Stung by those memories – more bitter than the rest combined – he returns to contemplating the Casket of Winter, which lights the cave in faint, endless shades of blue. The glow reflects off the temple's roof, bowed down with the weight of centuries and centuries of snow and ice, creating strange figures against the curved walls. All this time he carried it, felt its pull without fully understanding why. Even as a child and being shown the wonders of Asgard's treasure room, fingers clasped in the All-Father's deceptively gentle hand, nothing captivated him as thoroughly as the Casket. The Casket held no such wonder for Thor, who was wide-eyed and barely able to focus on one treasure before alighting upon another. Thor –

No. Loki is not thinking of him. 

Loki spent months researching the ritual how he could, but for all that it is laid bare in this story the truth of the ceremony's intricacies is, indeed, a secret. Especially given there was only so much he was willing to reveal to others in the pursuit of more information. But he gathered enough to fill out what detail the book could not, and the memories playing at the edge of his mind provide the rest. Loki recalls again the thrill of sudden knowledge that washed over him when he read the story. Hears in his mind the chants. The interruption and the sounds of a war. A ceremony half-finished, and Loki still too whole by half.

He would bet anything – his head, his mouth, his life – that the story tells of true events. And he knows, with startling and absolute clarity, that it is above all others _this_ secret Odin feared he would learn.

 _How now, All-Father?_ Loki wants to spit those words at Odin's feet. Almost as dearly as he wants Odin to appear at the temple's entrance and to once more steal away the Casket and free Loki from an endlessly cold fate. Would the King of Asgard twice spare the King-to-be of Jötunheimr? Some necessity spared Loki the first time. What Loki would not give to believe it's love that could spare him a second ...

Too late by far, now. 

“I regret not my wickedness,” Loki says, words echoing against walls that are not used to spoken sound. He may be alone, but the Nornir hear always and it will be known what he spoke. It would be known that if any other being had also half a heart, their sins would have been twice as terrible.

Loki presses his hands against the frozen floor and speaks winter-song into the ice. Threads of glowing magic twist from his fingers to curl around the temple floors. He was right – this ritual does not require specific words or actions; it hinges on intent, on sacrifice. A trail of arabesques rapidly circle and crawl up the pedestal toward the Casket, which shimmers and begins to whisper to him in a thousand thousand languages, felt more than heard and only a handful familiar to him. 

Certain phrases are sharper, lift above the bottomless murmur. _Prince of Ice_ , he hears. _Winter son. King-slayer. Come to finish. Odinson and Liesmith. Firstborn and secondson. Come to begin._

A fissure runs through the Casket's middle and opens; the chatter swiftly becomes deafening. _King-to-be._ Loki closes his eyes and tilts his head back, glorying in the chill of deepest winter that washes over him. _King-who-is._ His lips split in a grin at the first feel of tapping, seeking long-dead fingers. _We welcome you_ , the words scratched in blood across his mind, _waited for you. Asgard stole you and rejected you._ Yes! Soon all of the realms can reject him and it will be no matter to him. He will be above such pettiness – such stifling emotions. Let Thor have his passion. Loki will be stronger for its absence.

The fingers abruptly still, and the murmurs become a clamor – a fierce argument that rattles Loki to his bones and causes the temple beams to creak and shift. _OURS_ , the ancients scream, and then quietly, as if the argument is happening a great distance away, _sacrifice of equal value._ In a single voice, a single language, of jarring lucidity: _We accept._

The light against his closed eyelids intensifies, seems to originate from all directions and becomes an almost tangible weight pressing his kneeling form lower, bowing his back. The seeking hands move again, but they crawl up his chest, a thousand fingers mapping the shape of his lips.

This isn't right. This is not how Loki remembers.

Loki tries to pull up his hands to protect himself but they may as well be weighed down to the floor by Mjölnir. Spells fizzle along his fingertips but do not manifest. A particular hand pries open his mouth, and Loki knows – he _knows_ – that the hand is Laufey's. No! The seeking hands withdraw, and Loki coughs and gags on a viscous liquid he suddenly feels spreading the length of his throat. He opens his eyes and sees the ghostly shadows of the hands, the fingers beckoning, and he helplessly spits out a mouthful of whatever unknown substance chokes him. The black liquid follows the spirals of the magic along the floor, a serpent called by the Casket's unceasing and cacophonous song. 

Bowed, his arms straining to keep himself from slamming forward, Loki gags as more of the thick liquid pours from his mouth, smears down his chin. There's too much – it drips from his ears and nose, is ripped from his fingertips. And all of it glides forward and upward, drawn into the Casket's greedy depths. 

Loki only notices the blood-red mist that emerges from the Casket and follows the same but opposite path of the liquid once it has already begun a rapid crawl up his arms with such heat as to make Múspellsheimr itself jealous. The gods what agony, and he can't even inhale enough to scream – can't make any sound at all. And as his blood heats and moves faster through his veins he realizes, horrified, what sacrifice of equal value he has just unwillingly made.

No. No no _no_!

This isn't what he wants! He chokes helplessly on the last of the black liquid, watches as it disappears into the Casket. The red mist, too completes its journey and sinks into his pores, burning him from the inside out. His chest expands horribly, ribs pressing unnaturally outward, and just when Loki expects to rupture from the strain he hears a long, low sigh, and then – 

Nothing.

The tension dissipates, gone as if it never was, and so too whatever was holding Loki's hands immobile. He collapses down, his nose thwacking into the ground. He takes much less notice of the blood that trickles down his chin than in how the murmurs quiet and drift away as the Casket seals closed. A strange thump, and then the Casket begins to melt into the floor.

No! Loki crawls forward, his body clumsy as if he was held captive for years instead of minutes. He scrabbles desperately at the Casket but it melts too quickly and slips, insubstantial, through his fingers. He keeps scratching past when his fingers bleed, past when the glow of magic has faded and the temple is again still and undisturbed. Loki can barely think for his shock.

Loki has no comprehension of how much time must pass before he forces himself to stop. Strength utterly spent, Loki covers his mouth with his shaking hands and sways forward until his forehead rests against the frozen ground, legs folded beneath him. In the shelter of his cupped hands he tries to speak the word _why_ , but no sound breaks the temple's silence. His lips don't even properly shape the syllable. He shudders.

How just. How fitting. How gods-be-damned _wretched_. The last words he'll ever voice were a lie.

* * *

_Then_

Loki covers his mouth with both hands.

To muffle the sound of his breathing as he pads quietly down the hallway, he tells himself, thankful that Thor is not around to pin him to the floor and twist his arm up his back until Loki spits out the truth – that he covers his mouth to muffle his delighted laughter. Loki is still young, far short of the height he one day will reach, and he spends most waking hours dizzy with the magics he is only just beginning to learn. Every spell Loki learns is a revelation but never a sufficient one when there is so much still to know. He keeps an ever-expanding mental list of enchantments he wants to master and mystical mysteries he wants to unravel, and if it takes him until the far-off day Yggdrasil itself withers and crumples to ash he swears he'll cross off every last one.

At the great entranceway to the treasure room, Loki glances at first one guard and then the other; he may as well be a fly for the notice Halvard and Amund take. They are attentive, keeping careful watch, scanning the hallways for intruders and nodding at passing Aesirs, but whenever they happen to face toward Loki's direction their gaze passes over his form without the slightest catch. Incredible. 

He's tempted to dally here for as long as it takes to be discovered. Would Halvard feel his stare on his back first or would Loki's concentration break first and Halvard only notice him when he flickers into sight? How long would he be able to tickle a finger down Amund's arm before he realizes it's not a stray insect? If Loki whispered soft suggestions would they mistake his words for their own thoughts? Their own intentions? What if –

No. Loki has a more pressing curiosity to assuage and still the trickiest obstacle ahead of him before he can. _Another time_ , he promises himself. Facing the doors again, Loki places a careful hand against the wood and concentrates on making himself insubstantial as he mouths the necessary enchantments. While one day he will use this magic to tread effortlessly between realms, today he panics slipping through a single wall, nearly trapping himself. 

Once through, Loki is so startled he trips forward and almost sinks through the floor. Catching himself in time, he forces his body to be motionless and listens for any commotion, but he hears only the sound of his own gasps. He's in a hall lined with Asgard's dearest treasures, and he'd gone through the front entrance.

Loki is, frankly, stunned he's going to get away with this.

Righting himself, Loki quickly descends to the bottom of the staircase without pause; there is only one item in this room that interests him, that calls to him in some relentlessly compelling fashion. Ever since this morning when father took Loki and Thor on a tour through this treasure room, Loki has been unable to think of anything else. As if the Casket of Ancient Winter speaks to him in some unfamiliar language, trying to tell him a story he already knows but which hovers and waits just past his conscious memory. Standing before it, Loki swears his heartbeat thumps in triple-time. He reaches his hands out, framing the Casket between his palms and marveling at the ethereal light tinting his skin blue. Carefully, he brings his hands closer, and the voices become just a bit clearer – 

“Hah! I knew you'd be here, Loki! I knew it and I was right!”

Loki snatches his hands back from the Casket and spins to face the entrance. Thor has time to bound down the stairs, halt beside him, and throw an arm around his shoulders, all while grinning madly, before Loki registers that it is neither Amund nor Halvard nor Odin come to lecture him for being where he should not be, for almost laying hands on what he should under no circumstances be touching. 

_Moron_ , he hisses to himself. _You should have been paying attention – should have been ready to shield yourself from sight the moment someone else was near._ Except Loki is not entirely certain the thought originated in his own mind.

“And you're after this gloomy old thing, too. I knew it! As soon as you weren't in your room I knew that you'd be here madly _coveting_. It's your favorite, isn't it? Of all the wonderful things here this is your favorite and you were going to spend all day in the dark staring at it and probably molesting it. Ask me how I know! Go on.”

Loki squirms under the arm pinning him fast to the other boy's side, but Thor simply tightens his hold. Thor has only just begun sparring with wooden swords around the practice rings and already his physical strength is twice Loki's. Conscious of how easily Thor is pinning him and irritated at how easily Thor guessed his intentions, Loki snaps, “Maybe it was how I was staring at it when we were here earlier? I wasn't _trying_ to hide it.”

“Wrong!” Thor says. “Well, I mean, yes, you _were_. Staring, I mean. But that's not how I meant.” He shakes Loki. “Ask me, Loki. Come on!”

Crossing his arms, lips turned sullenly down, Loki turns his head away from Thor. “Fine. How did you know?”

“Because you only like two kinds of things – things that are gloomy, and things that are shiny, and this is the gloomiest, shiniest thing I've ever seen,” Thor says so quickly the words run atop each other. “I'm surprised your knees didn't buckle when you saw it!”

“Shiny?” Loki repeats incredulously.

“Yes, shiny!” Thor says. “You know how I mean,” he wiggles his fingers, “ _Shiny_.”

Loki has to stare at Thor's wiggling fingers for a long moment before he understands. “ _Oh._ Shiny. You mean,” he mirrors Thor's motion, but allows wisps of green light to curl around his fingers. “Magic.” At Thor's nod, Loki says again, “Oh. I thought you meant –” He bites his tongue to stop the last word, tries to halt his hand from gesturing, but it's too late; Thor's teeth gleam white, and Loki feels a blush redden his cheeks. 

“ _Me._ Hah! You thought I meant shiny like _me_ ,” Thor says, absolute delight buoying each word. Loki hasn't a blink in which to sputter an embarrassed denial before Thor sweeps him up in a hug and spins them around until Loki is dizzy. “You're like a – a skinny, prickly, unpleasant teddy bear, Loki. Never be different!” 

There is explicit insult in that sentiment, Loki is nearly certain, or he would be except that an insult wouldn't normally cause the blush on his face grow to warmer. “Let me go, you oaf,” Loki demands, but he doesn't quite attempt to escape Thor's hold and may in fact have raised his own arms to lightly hug Thor back. While Thor spins them around again, Loki hides his red face against Thor's neck and quietly enjoys the thump of his own heartbeat in his ears; sometimes, when Thor is not around, Loki forgets he has one. 

“How did you get here?” Loki asks, when he finally brings himself to shrug out of Thor's embrace. 

“How did I – through the entrance,” Thor says slowly, as if Loki is slow. “Pushed open the doors, walked through. The usual. Why? Did you come through the ceiling?” 

“Amund and Halvard let you pass? Father said specifically we're not to be here without him.”

Thor shrugs carelessly. “And Amund and Halvard also know that one day I'll be king. They're wise to cultivate my favor now.”

“Ah,” Loki says. He could challenge Thor's easy assumption of just which one of them will one day sit on Asgard's throne, but for now it is more amusing to say, “Very clever. Now when _you_ have sons with wide smiles, you'll already know which guards will disobey your orders so as to have a future king's favor. Good show.” 

“Oh,” Thor says. “Huh.”

While Thor puzzles over this revelation, Loki returns to his study of the Casket. Its call had dimmed at Thor's arrival, and now even though Loki strains his ears and Thor is silent, Thor's very presence must be too loud. Or else Loki is imagining everything, projecting some strange desire, attaching a deeper meaning to this – this gloomy, shiny relic where none exists. No. It can't be that. “I am too young to be so mad,” he murmurs. It is a testament to how often Loki murmurs strange thoughts to himself that Thor merely pats his shoulder and offers, “As you say.” 

Already bored with the Casket, Thor wanders off to inspect other treasures. Loki glances between Thor and the Casket; with Thor no longer beside him it calls again, to the ... negative space within him. Perhaps that's the answer. It calls to emptiness, so would have no hold over Thor. 

“Now your turn,” Thor announces. “You must guess which one I like best! And you have to tell me why, too. Like I did.” Without waiting for Loki's agreement, Thor clasps his hands behind his back and begins to hum a playful tune, ambling among the treasures and leaning close to inspect this one or that and waggling his eyebrows at Loki. “This one?” he muses. “Or this?” before starting up the hum again. “Do you need a hint? Guess, Loki!”

Loki allows Thor his game for several minutes before turning back to the Casket. “It's a trick question,” he says, and sees Thor's reflection in the Casket still. Without looking, Loki points to one of the few empty pedestals. “Your favorite is the space saved for whatever treasures you bring home in victory.”

When Thor doesn't answer, Loki turns to face him. Thor's smile is leagues wide. “That's right! How did you – Loki, that's it exactly. How did you know? You must tell me. I have to know.” He bounds forward and latches both hands around one of Loki's arms, shaking him. “Loki, you must! How do you always _know_?”

The more interesting question to consider is how could Loki not. Thor is a royal prince who will never know want anymore than Loki will – what true use for treasure could Thor have except for the tale of how it came to be his? He'll have to learn how to marvel – or at the least how to pretend to marvel – at the achievements of others, but for now his favorite stories are the ones that revolve around himself. And no one but Loki ever tells him to be otherwise. Simply stand Thor in front of a mirror, and Thor is not the only one who can barely see in his reflection the young boy for the tall warrior-king he will soon enough be. All of Asgard joins in the illusion. 

“My ears are burning,” Thor says. “Whatever _could_ be going through your mind?” Loki simply raises an eyebrow, and Thor grins wider. “It just got worse, didn't it?”

What a thoughtless, arrogant thing Thor is, and Loki's thought have indeed turned crueler, so how is it that _both_ of them are ever mistaking Loki's malice for affection?

“I'm far too delicate for your wicked tongue, Loki. You must spare me.” 

“As you say.” 

“No matter.” Thor's shoulders rise in another careless shrug; that Loki was never going to fall for this simple trick was no reason, in Thor's mind, not to try. “Keep your council. I don't need the details to know your secrets.” Loki blinks at him, and Thor's hands slide down to curl around Loki's. “Now come, magpie. We should go. I told them I would only be a moment and it's been that several times over.”

“You leave that way,” Loki says, tugging his hand free and shimmering out of sight. “I shall leave as I came.”

Thor gapes and looks wildly about – he spins once as if Loki merely stepped sideways out of view. “Loki! Where –?” He swings an arm out, and before Loki has time to duck the back of Thor's hand slams into Loki's nose. Loki yelps and thunks backwards onto the marble; his concentration ruined, the spell dissipates and Loki is visible again. 

For a moment, Thor and Loki stare at each other, Thor's arm still outstretched and Loki on the floor holding a hand to his bleeding nose. Thor's lips twitch first, and despite Loki's effort he feels his own eyes crinkling at the corners, and within one heartbeat and the next Thor is collapsed beside him and they are both choking on raucous laughter. 

“Loki! You – you – I shouldn't – shouldn't be – you're hurt,” Thor manages to gasp, but Loki just waves a dismissive hand and keeps laughing. “No – no, really – Loki, I'm sorry –”

Loki hears the door creak seconds before, “My prince? Is everything well?”

Thor's head whips around toward the entrance, where Amund peers in. 

“Oh,” Thor says, still chuckling, “I was just –” Loki quietly enjoys Thor's expression when he realizes Loki has once again melted from sight. Traitor, Thor mouths to where he believes Loki to be. “Just,” Thor gestures toward the Casket, “The Casket, you know, and, well,” and Loki has to bite his tongue to keep from snickering when Thor visibly attempts and fails to construct any lie – let alone a convincing one – connecting his loud laughter to the Casket of Ancient Winter. 

Amund is little help; he merely waits patiently as Thor stammers. He's still father's man, despite Thor's charm, and Loki makes a note to caution Thor from too quickly counting favors. Not that Thor will heed him.

Abandoning any pretense of excuse, Thor abruptly announces, “I will be on my way now. I've had my fill of these treasures for today.”

Loki has crossed his ankles and laced his hands behind his head, prepared to wait until he is alone before making his own considerably more dignified – and secretive – exit. But as he stands, Thor casually reaches out and fists his hand in Loki's tunic. Loki has no choice but to be dragged along or else risk discovery, and so while he allows himself to be led up the stairs he finds consolation by poking Thor repeatedly in the back and watching Thor attempt not to react.

“Of course,” Amund says when Thor reaches the top of the staircase. They are just through the entranceway when he adds, “And you as well, Prince Loki?”

Loki walks directly into Thor's back, and Thor, just as startled, stumbles forward. Loki glares at Amund, but no. Amund's stare is off by a ways, and Loki looks down but does not see himself. The spell holds. But what then?

The guard says, “Perhaps you were less stealthy than you believed.”

Amund is going to regret that. This is the sort of thing that Loki does not ever forget. While Loki seethes and Thor glances uncertainly between Amund and Loki's general direction, Halvard says, “You were as a mouse. Amund jests.” He taps the doors and says, “The room is warded, young prince. Against those that would sneak in with intentions far more sinister than curiosity.” 

Loki eyes the runes that appear along the doorway at Halvard's touch. Thor, clearly eager to be away from this tension, tightens his fist around Loki's tunic and says, over-loud, “As you were.” He drags Loki along once more. 

“He still wastes time and effort with parlor tricks,” Amund says to Halvard, as if Thor and Loki are more than a few feet away. “So he shields himself from our sight. What of Heimdall's? What of the Nornir? No, better for a man to stand his ground and let all who would look upon him.”

Loki's mental list grows just that much longer.


	2. Chapter 2

_Now_

Loki is going to eviscerate that misbegotten Vanir wretch. He is going to hunt him down, bind him to a post, and set vultures to peck at his flesh until he is nothing but bone. He is going to pry off his fingernails and use them to gorge out his eyeballs. He is going to feed him to Jörmungand. No, first he will gorge out the Vanir's eyeballs, then set vultures upon him, and then send his bones to rot in Jörmungand's belly. But before any of this, he is going to extract some answers. Because if the Vanir author does not have answers to Loki's liking, Loki may stop feeling so merciful. 

To think – an alternate trade! The book – and Loki skims through it for the thousandth time to be certain – does not mention that the sacrifice can be anything other than a heart for immortality and a ruthless rule. _Nothing_ mentions an alternate trade! To what point? The Casket should seek ought but to Jötunheimr's glory. How could Jötunheimr benefit from a crippled ruler? Loki rubs a hand along the length of this throat. Take anything else from him – his sorcery, his eyes, his _memory_. He would find a way to compensate. But this? No – Loki cannot accept this.

The Casket refuses to be called. It will heed any order but to appear before him. It speaks to him through the ground, hums underneath his boots; the ice feels like it reaches up to wrap thin roots around his legs, and he shivers at what is whispered to him. He has always had an affinity with ice, but this is beyond what he'd ever before imagined. This is control and power without limit. At a mere thought, the broken pedestal on which the Casket sat not hours before shoots up twice Loki's height and reforms itself in twisted, beautiful designs – is whole again. Loki whimmed the action, and the Casket, keeper to millennia of memory, murmured to him how the pedestal was at the height of its glory to the last detail. With little more effort he can remake this entire realm in that fashion. And all this just parlor tricks. Just Loki finding his feet. _What Jötunheimr is, was, and ought to be it will be again._ Asgard was wise to fear this. 

One option is to simply stay. Overthrowing Helblindi would be effortless; the Casket had already been stolen before Helblindi's birth, so he has both his heart and no power over the Casket, and thus no true claim to the throne. The Jötnar would yield to whomever wields the Casket's might. The ghostly feel of roots around him tightens in slow pulses, steals further up his body and snakes down an arm. _You must. You will._ He'd told Thor, what seems like a very long time ago, that he'd never wanted the throne, and he'd meant it. But this is not about want. _You must. You will._

But how could he now feel so broken, so damnably torn, when all he'd desired was to be whole? A ceremony of intent, and he'd been consumed with clear intention – to be rid at last of the half a heart that he has been unknowingly burdened with his entire existence, to start a new beginning in a realm that might welcome him, to show the All-Father and Thor what it meant to reject him. Was there some dissent in Loki's mind, buried so deeply it was soundless to his conscious ears? Some dissent deep in his half-a-heart?

And if this is what it is to have a whole one, Loki is less than impressed.

 _You must_ , and he will, but first he'll renegotiate for more acceptable terms. If other than the usual can be exchanged during the ceremony, than so to what calls the Casket. Some offering other than a king-to-be's heart. For while Loki may have offspring, he does not exactly have an heir whose heart he can use to coax the Casket into reappearing. Although ... the monstrous hearts of his monstrous, bound and chained children would surely be a more tempting offering than if he beget some Jötnar offspring and offered that. As he muses, Loki drags a hand across one of the temple's walls; cracks and fissures fill and smooth, fractured patterns meet and mend harmoniously. That would be a more agreeable prize than Loki's tongue, wouldn't it?

Yet another question he'll have for the Vanir author who knows too much and had better know even more. Loki had purposefully neglected to seek him out before. The Vanir may have recognized Loki's plans, and although it's doubtful he could have himself stopped Loki, he could theoretically have reached word to someone with better odds. And Loki had not been ready to tip his hand to the All-Father that soon. No matter. Loki will find his answers. 

But still ... he cannot shake the feeling that he's been made a fool of, and the list of beings Loki tolerates this from is short and certainly does not include a soon-to-be eyeball-less, vulture-pecked pile of Vanir bones rotting in a snake's belly. 

He departs Jötunheimr for the fertile and green Vanaheimr. Once more he finds himself flitting between settlements; his head tilts to one side as he listens for a thread of magic that matches the harmony in the books' illustrations. Most Vanir give him a wide berth as he stalks through crowded market roads and along beaten country pathways. They likely do so more at the scowl tightening his face than at any fear Loki might mean them or this realm harm. Only a handful are privy to the true events that led to Odin's sleep and his own fall, and the rumors that have since circulated the realms range from the ridiculous to the insulting. But that's how it has always been – if others did such interesting things with their entire lives as Loki does with an afternoon, then ridiculous and insulting rumors would circulate about them, as well. 

A promising thread leads him to a small bookshop, and Loki hunts through the stacks until he finds a a book that appears to have been drawn by the same hand as the one Loki seeks. He picks up the book and flips through it; again, no words and no name. He presses his fingers against the pages. Some Vanir prayer book, it sounds like. Mundane chants for prosperity and wisdom. How to be a good Vanir child who will grow into a proud Vanir adult. Dull and droning. So the Vanir's works aren't all impressive thefts of ancient secrets. Pity.

Finding the shopkeeper, Loki tosses the book onto the counter between them. The shopkeeper, a short, ginger Vanir with a thick build, taps the book with a thick finger and says, “This is an excellent choice, my lord. A popular and beloved choice. Is there anything else you wish to purchase?”

Loki smiles thinly and shakes his head; he makes to speak, even opens his mouth, before he remembers. Hmmm. He reaches behind the shopkeep and grabs both a ledger and a pen. Loki holds up a finger and then points down, to ensure the shopkeeper's attention. He writes, _find me the one who drew this._ Or, he attempts to. But each letter smudges before it's fully formed, and when Loki has finished the sentence, the ink has smeared and melted away, leaving no trace. Loki looks up to meet the gaze of the shopkeeper, who had dutifully watched Loki attempt and fail to write a message. 

No voice. Not even a written one. And he cannot plant suggestions into the Vanir's mind; he must be able to speak the words that he then tricks another into believing originated in his own mind. 

“My lord?” the shopkeeper says, an uncertain smile still on his face.

Helplessness does not sit well in Loki's stomach. _You strike me as an intelligent shopkeeper, someone who knows everything there is to know about his wares_ , Loki would say if he had a voice. But he doesn't, so he'll use less eloquent methods. He gestures at the wooden countertop, encouraging the wood to reach up and wrap around the Vanir's wrists, pinning both of his hands to the counter; the Vanir watches this with his mouth slightly ajar. He tugs at his hands, but the makeshift bindings hold. Loki clicks his fingers to regain the Vanir's attention, and then he points first to the Vanir, and then to the book. “Yes?” the shopkeeper says, eyes flicking between Loki and his pinned wrists. “You want to purchase this?”

Loki shakes his head, and then he takes one of the Vanir's fingers and snaps it cleanly backwards. The shopkeeper chokes on a scream, and in his peripheral vision Loki sees the few other Vanir present scramble for the exit. Loki taps each of the nine unbroken fingers, and then he again points to the Vanir and then to the book; he mimes drawing something on the pages. _Guess again, my friend._

“You – you want to take this? Please! It is my gift to you. It is yours.”

 _Kind of you. But no. Although I could surely use your assistance, if you were willing._ Another snapped finger, from the Vanir's other hand this time. A tear tracks down the Vanir's face. Again Loki points to the shopkeeper and then to the book. “I don't understand, my lord.”

How little use Loki has for slow learners. It takes three more obscenely loud snaps after three more unsatisfying answers before the Vanir begins to realize the game and offer more promising guesses. “You want me to – to read you ... read to you the book? There aren't words in it, my lord. But!” he cries, when Loki moves to a different finger. “I can. I will. Is that what you wish?”

Loki taps the next finger in line, considering. This is closer to what he wants. How to encourage the Vanir in this direction? Loki takes the book and presses it to his chest. He points to the shopkeeper and taps the book. _This is close to my heart. I wish to meet the author who has such a talented hand. I would be grateful to any who pointed me in a promising direction._

“They're just prayers, my lord. I can recite them for you right now. Anything! If you would just tell me what you desire!”

Another snap. Loki is going to have to resort to larger bones if this pace persists. The Vanir must see this inevitability in Loki's expression, because he begins babbling promises and sobbing pleas for mercy. Irritated, his head beginning to hurt from the Vanir's sobs, Loki idly breaks two more fingers. He'll just have to – wait. What did the Vanir just say? Loki clicks his fingers together and then gestures. _Go back. Go back a sentence._

Wide-eyed, the Vanir follows Loki's fingers, and hesitantly – hopefully – says, “The ... the illustrator? You want him to draw you a story?”

Yes! That's close enough! Loki nods his head eagerly. 

“I don't know who drew this! I don't even know a name.”

Loki sighs soundlessly, rubbing his throat. Fine. It was perhaps unrealistic to believe he would find his answers at his first lead. He places his hand against the back of the Vanir's head and slams him nose-first into the wood; a little encouragement and the wooden counter wraps around the man's neck in a binding to match his wrists. Someone will surely be along eventually to free him. In the meantime, the Vanir will have time to contemplate how disappointed he's just made someone much more powerful than himself. _This is nothing personal_ , Loki would say, or _if it's consolation, I've seen stronger men break sooner_ , except he cannot, so he pats the Vanir's head, takes the book, and then takes his leave of the shop.

Other inquiries yield equally disappointing results. No name. No location. No lead. The Vanir appear to hold in exceptionally high esteem an author they cannot even say with certainty exists. Loki ends up with six more of the books, each on a different subject – no order to them, things like horse-rearing, discussions on Midgard's seasonal patterns, a treatise on Dwarvish wagers, a history of architecture – and each as useless as the last. But with each book Loki's grasp of the Vanir's magic grows that much clearer, and each subsequent book is easier to pinpoint than the one before. But how his throat aches more with each occasion he forgets himself and attempts to speak. 

His current lead points him in to a sparsely populated grassland, little more than grazing herds of docile animals and occasional buildings off in the distance. Peaceful. This is a place of peace and gentle solitude, and Loki's skin itches to walk through it. He would turn around, except the Vanir author's thread of magic pulses ever louder in his mind and leads him inexorably along this worn path. 

He hears the buzz of the roots underfoot long before he sees the tree itself. An ancient oak, massive and majestic, its wide-flung branches eating more and more of the sky with each step closer. The Vanir's magic becomes louder – clearer – too, the closer Loki is. He hurries the last distance, mindful of the roots suddenly stirring uneasily beneath his feet, shifting the ground to slow his progress. The tree must be keeper, protector, and what it keeps Loki means to know. Transitioning to snake-form, Loki slithers and slides across the tumultuous ground, fighting to keep from being flung up and away. A twisting path takes him finally to the tree's base where the buzzing is numblingly loud, and he finds –

A mound of dirt. A headstone. No engraved words – of _course_ no words – but a carved drawing of an elegantly entwined sun and moon. 

Returning to his regular form, Loki absently sends a stunning blast of winter through the ground, freezing the roots in place. He spends only a single inhale and exhale staring at the tombstone, one hand around his throat. Then he conjures a sledgehammer and swings it with all of his strength into the stone, again and again and again. The roots hiss lethargically and the trunk creaks in displeasure at his disrespect for ancient things, but Loki tires of ancient things telling him what to do. He does as he wishes, and at this moment he wishes to turn this stone to rubble. Finished, he tosses the hammer aside; it dissolves before it touches the ground. 

The Vanir can't be dead. He can't be dead because Loki hasn't had the chance to torture and kill him yet. And he still has to explain to Loki how the ceremony went wrong. How to make it right. Loki can't – he can't tolerate this. This _silence_. He rubs a hand against his chest. And what use a heart if he can't express it? If it spent too long in winter's belly and is now a rotted, dead thing that does little but ache inside him? Is he meant to be this way? Is this why Jötunheimr ever calls to him, from realms away – _come home. We wait for you and welcome you. You must._

Not yet. He must and he will, but he is not thwarted yet. There is another means. A means that he has been assured is an equal-but-different alternative to his magic. He throws all seven books on to the grave – let the Vanir wretch's bones keep them.

The only question now is which of Midgardian's scientists would depress him the least to seek out for aid.

* * *

_Then_

Sleipnir, Loki discovers, is housed in the stables. Truthfully, Loki hasn't thought overmuch of Sleipnir since gifting him to father in full view of a stunned and embarrassed court. Father's expression had defined stoic. Loki had prompted several of the gathered lords and ladies for congratulations, as well as thanks for the protection now afforded to all of Asgard, and accepted both with an artfully demure smile. The only gaze he hadn't been able to bring himself to meet had been Thor's.

In the months since he has taken to riding horses when he travels in direct response to father's hesitant suggestion that Loki, perhaps, keep to less conventional means of transport until this ordeal has faded from the general population's mind. Loki is being trained well to be king or advisor to one and knows there are times to concede a battle in favor of a war; he knows that this is not one of them. Besides, it's hardly his fault if he's suddenly realized a fondness for riding bareback on a powerful mount. It's hardly his concern if Asgard chooses to stare.

If Thor chooses to stare. 

“We could walk,” Thor offers without much hope, trailing behind Loki on his way to the stables. Usually Loki has a horse brought to him, but he's beginning to suspect he's deliberately being presented with old, decrepit nags to discourage his newfound hobby. 

“Walking is slow.”

“There isn't a hurry.”

“To meet the ambassadors from Nidavellir? The Dwarves are sore enough as it is. We're surrounded now by the strongest, tallest, finest barrier as has ever been constructed and they didn't set so much as a stone of it. It will be centuries before they forgive us. _If_ they forgive us.”

“Exactly! They'll be late to demonstrate their displeasure. We'd look fools to arrive promptly.”

“That's how we would show our displeasure, Thor, were our roles reversed. Dwarves are not Aesir. Do you ever pay attention? Mark me, they will be early and showing all their teeth.”

“Then we could –”

“ _You_ walk!” Loki snaps. “Father only bid _you_ to greet them and I am along only at _your_ request. I've changed my mind. You go, nice and slow on foot, and when you arrive at the palace I will be waiting to assure our good Dwarf friends that you meant no insult by keeping them waiting near an hour and arriving with your finery stuck to you with sweat.” 

Thor halts him with a hand to his shoulder. “Forget the ambassadors. I care not what they think of me or for this political pettiness. I care what they think of _you_. I would protect you, if you would just allow me. I think only of you and your best interest, Loki.”

“And it pains me to know you believe your _protection_ is welcome.”

With a furrowed brow, Thor nods sharply, and Loki watches him walk away to meet the ambassadors. Good. Loki had had no intention of spending the next several hours on the Bifröst, tapping his foot. Although feigning impatience with Thor was easier than he'd anticipated. The price Loki paid for the fortifications now surrounding Asgard doesn't bother him. While perhaps not how he'd expected events to unfold, it's not as if he hasn't done worse things before. As if he won't undoubtedly do worse things yet. Thor can merely smile and win over the heart and mind of every Aesir in sight of him – Loki included. Loki can gift to the realm protection that will let every last Aesir in Asgard sleep soundly at night for millennia to come, and be thought an embarrassment. 

But Thor is not usually embarrassed by him. For him. 

Perhaps Loki will actually go for a ride. He continues to the stables, thinking to find the tallest, proudest stallion he can and ride it through the markets. He doesn't have to be around to smooth whatever dwarvish feathers Thor will inevitably ruffle. He brushes through the entranceway and finds –

Sleipnir.

Alone, in a stall to himself, and the other horses gathered as far from him as possible. He will soon enough grow into Odin's great warrior-steed, best of all horses, a thing of powerful muscle and grace, but for now he is still a colt, awkward and overthin and barely balanced on eight overlong legs. The stable master, a burly bastard named Herlief, has never cared for Loki; he lifts a lip at Loki as if to convey how even less he cares for him now that he has this new burden.

Loki isn't sure why he's so startled to see Sleipnir dozing in the stables. Sleipnir blinks his wide, dark eyes at him and does not appear to recognize him. 

“Sleipnir is – kept here?” Loki says.

Herlief, in the middle of directing the stable boys to their tasks, glances somewhere to Loki's left and then dismissively away. He grunts, “It's a _horse_ , even if it is a freakish one. Where did you think we'd put it?”

Loki patiently explains that _Thor_ stripped of blood and title is just an Aesir, but they hardly leave him to slum in some shack on the city's outskirts. Because blood matters and titles matter and Thor, whatever else he may be, is a royal prince. And Sleipnir, whatever else he may be, is ... Loki's son.

To be fair, Loki explains this after. When Odin bursts in, led by the panting and red-faced stable boys, Loki is straddling Herlief's chest, one hand covering the man's mouth, enchanting him to believe he is choking on his own tongue that Loki had severed and fed to him.

“Loki,” Odin rumbles, warning.

“Hmmm?” Loki answers, more interested in how Herlief turns alternately green with sickness and purple with asphyxiation than in how the outside light halos Odin's tall figure in the stable doorway. Herlief thrashes beneath him, but his struggles are weaker with each passing moment.

“ _Loki._ ”

“In a moment, father,” Loki says. He applies just a touch more pressure. A wisp of green curls down his fingers and into Herlief's mouth, encouraging him to taste the blood and meat of his own tongue. Herlief's eyes bulge.

“Loki, you will explain yourself!”

Herlief's limbs, too weak to flail any longer, nevertheless twitch unceasingly. He breathes desperately through his nose, warm on Loki's hand.

“We exchanged words, father,” Loki says. “I graciously invited our stable master to take his back. He declined. I am afraid I had to insist.”

Later that morning, an army of contractors is assigned the task of converting a set of suites in the palace wing closest to Loki's rooms into a royal stable. Loki personally oversees the construction, directing a wider window here, a gate there, demolish this wall and section this room just so. Now he stands off to one side, observing the rapid progress. Sleipnir hovers next to him, his nose pressed to Loki's thigh. Since being led from the stables, and after a long minute spent sniffing Loki's hand, Sleipnir has not strayed more than a hairsbreadth from his side. The uneven clatter of eight hooves upon stone bleeds together into a kind of jagged song, and Loki sometimes hums along. 

Usually any gathered group of Aesir would sneer when his back was turned and bristle at his orders, be deliberately clumsy and slow, whisper _liesmith_ and – this is new but no less accurate – _horse-fucker_ when they believe his ears far enough away. But word of Herlief's chastening traveled fast and required little embellishment to impress, and the Aesir trip over themselves to obey. For a few days, Loki will be treated with the respect he deserves. In a few days, they will forget, as they always, always do. The insults, though, they'll remember.

“Men will try to walk on you because they think how you are is not how you should be,” Loki murmurs, gently stroking one of Sleipnir's ears “They will continue to walk over you unless you remind them why men with only two legs should not test the patience of those with eight.” Sleipnir slinks even closer, his legs rearranging themselves in baffling patterns.

In the late afternoon, Loki is instructing the workers in the design of an archway against the back wall, but one that is to be filled floor to ceiling with brick, when an angry clap of thunder precedes Thor's furious approach. 

“A moment, Loki,” he says, a firm hand around Loki's bicep already dragging him off to an unoccupied corner. A few Aesir pause, eager to watch an altercation, but a thin smile from Loki reminds them the virtue of discretion. Sleipnir trails close behind, and when Thor notices him, his hand tightens around Loki's arm. 

“And how did your meeting go?” Loki asks.

“Poorly,” Thor says, a frown twisting his lips. “They were _four hours_ late. I _ran_ to arrive early. You knew they would be! And I thought you meant they'd be _smiling_. Why did you tell me otherwise?”

Calmly, Loki says, “At any given time you heed less than half of what I say, so I assumed the odds that nothing I said would matter were in my favor.”

“You assumed – this isn't a game!”

“It is,” Loki says, tugging his arm free from Thor's hold. “And the sooner you recognize it as such the better at it you will be.”

“Our reputation? The lives of our people? These are games to you?”

“No. How many ways must I explain this to you? Everything is not strictly winner or loser. Your mild humiliation gave the dwarves a petty victory. It makes them more amenable to later negotiations that matter more.”

If anything, the storm outside thickens. “And you couldn't tell me this in advance?”

“You wouldn't have agreed to it!”

“But you lied to me. I _rely_ on you, Loki. How am to trust your advice when I cannot discern what is false for my own good from what is simply true?”

“Thor,” Loki says, clasping Thor's shoulders with either hand, forcing his brother to meet his gaze. “I know I can be ... difficult to follow. But when it matters, when you have true need of me, _never_ doubt that I am on your side, that I have your back. _Never._ ”

Thor falls silent, and Loki, after giving Thor's shoulders a firm squeeze, returns to directing the workers – many of whom had stopped to blatantly eavesdrop despite Loki's warning. Loki randomly turns tools into snakes until the work at hand has the Aesir's absolute, full attention.

“I heard what you did to Herlief,” Thor says, when some time has passed. “What was that?”

Loki shrugs a shoulder. “I lost my temper, I suppose.”

Thor grins suddenly, good cheer restored, and slaps Loki's back. “You should do that more often, Loki! It makes you more ... more real to me.” He adds, while Loki's heart unexpectedly thumps, “I expect to see you at dinner this evening. I believe I managed to offend every last one of our Dwarfish friends before we even crossed the Bifröst, and I expect you to convince them I didn't.”

Three days later, and construction is complete. Loki thanks the workers, who have already renewed their grumbling and barely grunt in response. The suites are perfect – sweeping archways, wide windows overlooking the vast Asgardian sky, fresh mounds of hay and huge troughs of food and water, to be filled daily by Sleipnir's personal trio of stable boys. The last touch, Loki finishes himself. With a hand against the brick-filled archway, Loki concentrates on opening this doorway to the one he's already erected in a distant field. The brick shimmers once, like a sheet of water poured from above, and then stills. It will act as a portal, discernible on either end only to Loki and Sleipnir, so that Sleipnir will have constant access to the outdoors.

Loki leads Sleipnir through and back, demonstrating. Then he says, “This satisfies you?” Sleipnir whinnies softly, a happy sound, and nudges against his leg. “Go running,” Loki says, pointing to the portal. “Father will have no use for a fat, lazy steed.” Sleipnir, with a final snort, listens. 

That should be the end of it. Loki had felt a twinge of guilt – perhaps even of kinship, if Thor were to twist his arm – and rectified it as wholly as could've been asked of any man. He should think no more of the skinny colt with eyes that, in a certain light, are tinted with a touch of green.

Within a week he is back in the suites. He doesn't go immediately to Sleipnir; he surveys the rooms, knocking against the new walls to ensure sturdiness and quality of workmanship, running his fingers along the windowsills to check for jagged edges, and inspecting the food supplies to ensure Sleipnir is being well fed and watered. Sleipnir follows him from wall to wall, so close that his muzzle is constantly pressed to Loki's hand or thigh.

After studying Sleipnir himself to see he's being well groomed and Loki need not find and whip any neglectful stable boys, Loki again orders Sleipnir to go running; and again, Sleipnir eagerly complies. Did he understand Loki's words or was it his gesture? Or both? Loki should return, at some later date, and determine this conclusively. It would be useful knowledge.

This explains the next few visits Loki spends giving Sleipnir increasingly complex commands and gestures, isolating and studying the extent of Sleipnir's intelligence. It doesn't quite explain the pride Loki experiences at discovering just how intelligent Sleipnir is. And it most definitely does not explain the countless, sporadic visits, spread out over centuries, that Loki spends lounging in the suites, books laid out over mounds of hay while Sleipnir crowds next to him; the times Sleipnir is waiting for him – although Loki makes no predictable pattern of his visits – with the handle of a basket of Idunn's apples held carefully between his teeth, and they spend an afternoon sharing the stolen bounty; or the handful of times when Loki changes to mare-form and runs blissfully through the fields beside Sleipnir, hours passing as seconds. 

Long past when Sleipnir's own brand of magics blossoms – past when Sleipnir's shoulders are broad and Loki is eye-to-eye with him when standing – and he is capable of traveling without the aid of Loki's portal, he will nevertheless make pointed use of the portal in Loki's presence. When he does, he gives Loki a fond look that makes Loki's throat close and something in his chest twist. 

It is many, many years before Thor visits Sleipnir's suites again. This time no angry thunder announces him; just a peaceful rainfall that creates a comforting patter against the stone windowsills. Thor stands across the room from Loki, leaning against a wall and glancing between Loki and Sleipnir with a puzzled expression. Sleipnir, Loki has long since discovered, makes Thor uneasy. There are many possible explanations, ranging from Sleipnir's origin in Loki's belly to Sleipnir's unsettling appearance to the fact that Loki gifted him to father and not to Thor. Loki suspects there is a drop of truth in all of them and not a complete truth in any one.

Loki ignores him, leisurely brushing Sleipnir's mane. Just when Loki expects Thor to simply leave, Thor says, “You're fond of Sleipnir, aren't you? Truly?”

Running his fingers through Sleipnir's mane, Loki takes a moment to answer. “Of all of the unintended fruits of my many labors, he is not the most displeasing.” Loki has done worse things before. He'll do worse things again. Sleipnir snorts and nudges him until Loki resumes combing.

Thor barks a laugh. “You adore it, Loki.” Loki's lips tighten at the pronoun, but Thor doesn't appear to notice. “You pretend it doesn't exist half the time, you don't blink when father rides it like a common horse, and then every so often you disappear into here and – and dote on it.”

“And what of it?” Loki asks.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Thor says. “Except, well – you are not the type. To adore things. Before Sleipnir I was not positive you could.”

“How insightful,” Loki says, droll, fighting to keep the unease from his voice. “Again, I ask, what of it?”

“It is just good to know,” Thor says. He leaves the suites then, and Loki cannot stifle his relieved sigh.

Thor, although he only visits again occasionally, is subsequently allowed in only on the strict condition of silence. “Your voice grates on Sleipnir's ears,” Loki had lied, and Thor had unexpectedly acquiesced. On those rare occasions, Loki quietly fusses over Sleipnir, Sleipnir quietly allows him to fuss, and Thor quietly watches them both with a strange, gentle expression on his face. Loki learns to look forward to the sound of rainfall.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note about the Avengers movie: This fic is movieverse (with cherry-picked Norse mythology), but I haven't seen the movie and have managed to be pretty spoiler-free, so this won't contain any Avengers spoilers. At most, it borrows a bit of imagery from the trailers. If there don't turn out to be any huge contradictions between the movie and this, then figure the movie took place a few years ago. Otherwise, figure that this is Avengers-AU.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who is reading! :D

_Now_

The answer arrives with unexpected ease. His often allies during the never-ending battle for Midgard value less that his talents are on their side and more that they are not turned against them. And ever, in the back of their minds, they must wonder what would happen if Loki turned his back on them. After all, Loki's universe is larger than theirs, and his alignment not quite as etched in stone. If he went to them for succor, wounded and vulnerable, he would be swiftly reclassified as a mark in their eyes and no longer comrade. Not because of the wound itself, but because Loki was foolish enough to reveal any level of dependence.

And even if he had no choice but to seek one of them out, his options leave much to be desired.

Amora would be little help. If he has not the magic to undo what has been done, she certainly will not. She would be interested only in finding what did this to Loki and stealing the magic for herself, setting the Executioner on him to stall him from following – not that she needs the excuse. She often sends that brainless behemoth after him when she is bored and seeking entertainment. Loki invariably sends the Executioner back to her in bloody pieces, and she sulks and snaps while she reassembles her deadly pet.

If technology exists to fix him, HYDRA would develop it with its far reach and army of scientists. But Loki usually limits his dealings with the powerful organization; he has no interest in their pure blood causes or old grudges nor they in his havoc-making, and when they ally they are allies of convenience rather than of shared purpose. Loki cannot trust that they wouldn't take this opportunity to implant some technology that remakes him in an image of HYDRA's choosing.

Loki would prefer to turn to Victor. If Loki were physically wounded, if his stomach torn out or his hands severed and no magic would heal him, Loki would already be at Victor's door. But Loki could destroy mountains and raze cities for him, and Victor would still regard Loki as interchangeable muscle. No, what Victor values above all from Loki is much simpler and much more difficult to find – wit and intelligent conversation. This is all that stays Victor from trying to strap Loki to a table and vivisect him. Victor has made no secret of this desire, frequently expounds upon how lovely it would be to see Loki's still breathing body drawn open and exposed while blood drips and pools beneath him. Without his tongue, Loki is good for nothing to Victor but a sharp knife and a journal of notes.

Which leaves Loki with the only choice he ever really had. To seek those who are less clever, less strong, less influential, but who would not slit an enemy's belly should it be bared in surrender. Loki arrives outside the secret entrance to the SHIELD headquarters. Some mechanism prevents him from appearing directly inside or slipping unseen through the walls. With effort Loki would likely be able to overcome these obstacles – has, in the past, but they are ever upgrading and updating and repairing – but he is not here to antagonize.

The two agents guarding the door, both of them with dark suits over protective armor, coats that don't entirely conceal the shape of weapons, dark glasses hiding sharp eyes, stare. Loki nods his head to them in greeting and then holds out his hands, wrists together and palms up. They do not hesitate for long.

This is not the first time Loki has been marched with armed guard through SHIELD hallways, but it's the first time he's volunteered for the trip. Every face they pass keeps glancing at him, perplexed. Loki, they believe, should be talking: amiable anecdotes as they cuff his wrists, charming compliments accompanied by slanted glances to make the women blush, casual mentions of intriguing hints that are half true and would benefit them if they could ever discern which is which in time. But today Loki stares straight ahead, looks through them and past them. His silence alarms them more than if he'd arrived drenched in blood and gore.

Unsurprisingly, he ends up in the large cylinder holding cell they are so fond of locking him inside. Loki slinks down to sit cross-legged in the middle of the cell, settling in to wait. He ignores all attempts at interrogation, all questions, all visitors. They will figure out eventually just whom he is here to see. Because while he seeks their assistance, he will first need a translator to convey what he seeks, and there is only one being in the entire nine realms who has never particularly needed words to know Loki's mind.

Sure enough, Loki is not kept waiting a day before the elevators open to Thor's tall, shining figure.

Thor beams when he spots Loki, lights up utterly, but Loki feels little but satisfaction that his plan may just work. For the first time he can remember, in all of the lifetimes he's known Thor, his heart doesn't thump at the sight of him. Maybe Loki is finally moving on. Maybe he has finally – truly – put Thor behind him. Loki feels no sadness at the thought; only the vague impression that, at one time, this realization would have cut him to bone and marrow.

Thor heads directly for him, but the irritating mother hen, Fury, steps in between Thor and the cell and holds up a hand to stop him. “Not so fast there. We need to set some ground rules for this happy little reunion SHIELD is ever so pleased to be hosting.”

As expected, Thor takes bare notice of the sarcasm being spit on his face so thickly it should slough off like mud. “Did Loki surrender to us? Is he here to make peace? I understand there was no fight when he arrived.”

“He let us stick him in that holding cell,” Fury says. “Anything else I'm not willing to assume.”

“And he asked for me?”

“He hasn't so much as snapped at anyone else, so we went ahead and made the huge intuitive leap that he's looking for big brother. You can tell how touching I'm finding all of this.”

“If you would allow me through to speak with my brother, I am sure all will be made clear,” Thor says, his attention focused completely on Loki. Fury's back is to him, but Loki can imagine the man's expression from the tense line of his shoulders. 

This is not Loki's first time in a Midgardian holding cylinder. As long as he has Thor's attention, he gestures to the security cameras he knows are recording every second of his stay.

“Ah. And perhaps we might have some privacy? I imagine he will speak more candidly.”

“You may absolutely not have some privacy. Me and all the damn headquarters are going to be right there at those monitors watching every word with the sound turned all the way up.” Standing among a gathered group of agents behind the bank of nearby monitors, the only face familiar to Loki – Coulson, he believes – waves. “I see so much as a twitch I don't like, that's when the tasing starts.”

Thor frowns. “There will be someone else in there with us?”

“Nope. Stark did some upgrades a while back. Whole damn cell's electrified, and we just set it to demi-god. It'll knock the two of you out for days. And if you think I'm going to stop Barton from doodling obscenities on your unconscious face you, my Norse friend, are sorely, sorely mistaken. Coulson's gonna provide the sharpies.” Coulson reaches into a pocket and holds up a marker.

“I like to be prepared,” he says.

“The man,” Fury says, “likes to be prepared.” 

“You are displeased,” Thor observes. At some point Thor crossed his arms over his chest, biceps bulging and stance slightly more aggressive. Loki is as unclear today why Thor allows this mortal to block his path as the first time word of Thor's new alliance reached his ears. 

“You're fucking right I'm _displeased_. I like my world nice and easy. I like my good guys good and following orders and I like my bad guys bad and either dead, soon to be dead, or by the grace of god and Coulson's very unique brand of therapy, rehabilitated. Speaking of which, I believe also involves copious use of tasers. Isn't that right, agent?”

“Tasers comprise a not insignificant portion of the curriculum,” Coulson says.

“There you go. Now, you are making my straightforward world complicated, and I don't like that. Believe me, I understand family trouble. I don't care that baby brother has some daddy issues and poor self-esteem.” The cell buzzes as it works to contain the magic suddenly crackling along Loki's skin. “I care that baby brother takes his tantrums out on my city, my _planet_ , and then thinks he can waltz in here and visit you whenever he pleases. This has been going on for years and I'm _tired_ of it. I have enough psychopaths on my plate. You get five minutes to figure out what's what, after which you will explain it to me in a way I don't hate. You don't voluntarily leave that cell after your generously alloted time, and well,” Coulson waves his marker again, smiling blandly. 

Thor solemnly agrees to the conditions, and Fury grudgingly steps aside to allow Thor to enter the cell.

Loki rises when Thor enters and is immediately swept into a fierce hug. Thor twirls them in circles, and Loki cannot help but think of older, different times, when he'd hide his face in Thor's neck and listen to his own elusive heartbeat. He eyes Thor's neck but does not feel compelled to bury his nose there. He's moved on, after all.

“Loki! How I've missed you, brother.”

As if they have been apart for years, for centuries, instead of mere months. Loki pulls away, putting an arm's length between them, and studies Thor. This is not precisely the reaction he'd been prepared to handle. Loki is fairly certain that the last time they'd seen one another, before Loki's discover in Victor's library, he'd set Thor on fire. 

If nothing else, he'd anticipated dealing with Thor's disappointment and his sorrow, the usual way he looks at Loki these years. He looks at Loki how Frigga used to look at Loki. _You took after her_ , Loki thinks, would say if he could just to see if Thor understood.

But this Thor radiates happiness. He's taken both of Loki's hands in both of his, clasping their linked hands between them. Thor's thumbs rub soothingly along Loki's knuckles.

“What brings you here, Loki?” Thor asks, as if they are literally any where else but an electrified SHIELD holding cell. “You weren't around for too long. I grew concerned. If you had not shown here I was nearly set to go searching for you.”

Searching for him, like a missing friend. Loki has mercilessly terrorized that harlot who had the audacity to win Thor's love in weeks. He has aligned himself with those who mean Thor and those Thor cares about harm. Loki _set Thor on fire_. 

But Thor has never quite grasped the changed terms of their arrangement. He has the arrogance, as ever, to think if he merely determines new parameters, Loki will fall into line. Loki has, in the past. But that feels very long ago. No longer chained to the golden son's whim. 

If Fury wasn't bluffing – and Loki has no reason to think he was – then their time is limited. But Loki has already concluded how best to explain to Thor. This cell somehow negates most of his magics, the walls eating spells before they leave Loki's fingertips, but he experimented while waiting for Thor's arrival and found that small, harmless spells are not instantly detected and neutralized.

Extracting his hands from Thor's and placing a fingertip against Thor's lips, he taps his finger once and a familiar green cloth folds out and covers Thor's mouth. A second or two later the magic is recognized and the cloth dissolves, but not before Thor's face flushes and his eyes widen; he stares at Loki, riveted and uncertain. Before Thor can respond – can misconstrue – Loki brings a finger to his own lips and draws vertical zigzags across his mouth. Then he wraps both hands around his neck and does something he hasn't done for a while – he forces himself to look frightened. _Help me_ , Loki would say, _you promised to, long ago, if I allowed it_. 

“Oh, Loki, no,” Thor says, once more capturing and cradling Loki's hands in his. His jaw tightens, his hands squeeze Loki's, and every line of him sharpens and straightens in fierce determination.

Loki made the correct choice. Thor will set him to right. And when Loki returns to Jötunheimr as he must and will, he will be swift and merciful when it eventually comes times to lay waste to the places and people Thor loves.

Thor opens his mouth to speak – some declaration of intent, most likely – but he's interrupted by a strange buzzing. Then everything burns and Loki's vision goes abruptly black.

He hears Thor gasp and fall and then, just before unconsciousness closes his ears, Fury say, “I told you.”

* * *

Loki wakens slowly, the fog gradually clearing from his mind. He can feel that he's seated and upright, strapped quite securely to a metal chair. When he opens his eyes, there's a gun a few feet away being pointed casually at his forehead. It's held in the steady hands of the petite assassin.

“Good morning,” she says, deadpan. “Did you sleep well?”

Ignoring her, Loki studies the room. It's large and sterile, lined with banks of computers, tangles of wires, and other assorted Midgardian machinery. The press of land and heaviness above suggests they're some distance underground, and the two suited agents standing guard by the open door to his right suggests that he is still in the SHIELD headquarters. There are straps wrapped around his limbs and chest, and cuffs around his wrists and throat that clearly share some technological origin with the cell; he can feel them eating his magic before it can manifest past his skin. An unfamiliar man sits on a stool next to him, scribbling something on a pad of paper and studying the monitors. His knuckles are white against the pencil he holds, and one of his legs jiggles restlessly. 

“Huh,” the assassin says, drawing his attention back to her. “Fury was right. You're smaller when you can't talk back.” Then she disarms her weapon and slides it into one of the numerous holders surrounding her waist, presenting him with her back as she goes to consider one of the monitors against the far wall. “He's all yours, doctor.”

_Oh, you will regret that, little spider._

The man – the doctor – faces Loki, tapping the pen against the desk. “So, here's the thing,” he says. “Thor says you're hurt – something with your voice – and here for help. Before I go further, you do recognize that you're at SHIELD? As in, we're the Avengers, that happy group you try to kill on a regular basis. That's where we are right now. We're all on that page?” Loki, aware he will have some persuading ahead of him, simply nods. “Just checking. Okay. So, brace yourself here – well, we kind of did that for you. We're going to. But you have to help. You have to cooperate, do what we say, wear those cuffs that are negating your magic. You don't, and we don't.”

Loki stares. Just like that? The doctor chuckles and rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “Yeah. There was some big argument. Between Thor and Fury, you know. I wasn't there, but there was a lot of yelling, I think, and expensive equipment being thrown around. You can guess who did the majority of the throwing expensive equipment around and who did the majority of the ordering him to stop. But just to clarify – again, everyone on the same page, here – Thor convinced _Fury_. Not the rest of us.” Loki glances at the assassin, who is pointedly fingering one of the numerous weapons secured to her belt. “So? We have a deal?”

Wary of a trap, Loki nevertheless nods his head. Thor is not that effectual an arguer. What could he have possibly said? And to not first extract from Loki some promise in return – that he will mend his ways, agree to some future cease-fire? What game is this? And Loki was never under the impression that this motley group ever fell neatly into line like good, mindless soldiers – well, except for the one. While Loki is still pondering the suspicious ease with which this is progressing, he hears Thor in the hallways arguing with the Iron Man. Stark. 

“I demand to be present when –”

“Yes, yes, yes. We actually heard you the first twenty times, big guy. I'm beginning to think – and this is hurting my feelings, how callously you ignore me – that you haven't heard the twenty times I said no can do. This is the deal.”

“It concerns me that –”

“My god, don't we all have concerns about this. But seriously, you can't come in. We'll let you know how it goes, lots and lots of updates, etcetera etcetera. Now shoo. Away with you.”

Thor and Stark are closer, almost at the doorway. “I am not some clumsy oaf who cannot be trusted around such machines, nor do I misunderstand what I am asking of you. But I wish to see my brother before you begin and you will let me –”

“I think you've made yourself deaf with all your delightful booming there, which actually is kind of funny, you know, considering – anyway. Nope. You are officially not authorized to be here. Out, out, out. But first, and I say this as a friend, find a mirror.” Loki cranes his neck to see – long whiskers are drawn across Thor's cheeks, his nose has a dark circle, and hearts dot his forehead. “In fact, Greenman. You got a mirror over there?”

The man next to Loki rummages in a desk drawer and finds a small mirror, which he tosses to Stark. Greenman. Ah. That is why Loki hadn't been able to place him.

Stark gives the mirror to Thor, who is still staring at his reflection when Stark closes and locks the door with a click. “So! This should be a joy. Just exactly without exception how I wanted to spend my afternoon.” Stark claps his hands together. “First things first, Mr. Mute. No, Moki. Mute Loki. Yeah?” The assassin tilts her hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. Stark shrugs. “I'll work on it. I just found out about this. No one tells me anything. I ask to be in the loop, and all I hear is something something maybe if you were sober something something. Such is my curse. Anyway, Moki. We gotta know what happened. Feel free to be as detailed as your evil little heart desires during any parts of this story wherein something kicked your ass. If there was crying, begging, any sort of fearful vomiting, don't think you have to spare us.”

The doctor releases the straps holding down Loki's arms, and Stark hands him a pad of paper and a pen. _I will take out your spine through the iron of your suit_ , Loki thinks. He takes the pen and demonstrates how the ink disappears as soon as it touches paper.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” the doctor asks. Loki shakes his head. “Huh.” He and Stark exchange a glance. They place a keyboard in front of Loki, but the words turn to gibberish on the screen. They try reading his lips, but insist the movement of his mouth does not correspond to comprehensible language. They try for hours to focus instead on Loki's fingers pressing the keys, on how his wrist shapes his attempts at words. And while Loki's actions are clear to himself, Stark says, “It's like I'm looking at white noise. Like, if that were a possible thing. If you said: what does white noise look like? I would see what your hands are doing right now.” The doctor nods in agreement, as if this was a meaningful observation. 

Finally, Stark makes a show of cracking his fingers and stretching his neck. “Well, who doesn't like a challenge?”

That's when the true testing begins. They hook him to monitors, tape endless lengths of wires and monitors to his skin, take samples of blood and hair and tissue and analyze under light and lens. He's revealed down to nerves and muscle, organs and bone, in plain, three-dimensional relief on a row of computer displays. Loki would make plans to destroy this information later if he didn't know that SHIELD already has stores of intelligence on him filling countless files, all accumulated through past battles, or spilled by Thor's indiscretion, or gathered from Loki's previous, less amiable stays.

Loki pays no mind to the needles sliding under his skin or the beeps and whirls and taps around him. He focuses most of his attention on the image of his own beating heart. There's something wrong with the image ... something off, but he cannot seem to reason what.

The assassin paces the length of the room. Despite her earlier dismissal, she is prepared to fell him at the slightest provocation. But no need; Loki is ever so calm and agreeable and cooperative. Stark and the doctor mostly ignore him, working together in an effortless, seemingly choreographed dance around the lab. They barely need to finish their sentences before the other understands and acts, an easy stream of banter between them. If they were less insufferable, Victor would enjoy their company.

But Loki, for all that he is the center of attention, is being ignored, and any move he might make to return focus to himself would be construed as hostile. _If you fail me_ , Loki would say, _I might be less willing to overlook this insult._ The assassin drifts closer, and Loki makes an effort to uncurl his lip and smooth out his expression.

After hours of effort, the doctor announces, “Biologically speaking, it looks like we have a perfectly healthy,” he gestures vaguely. “Uh.”

“Alien,” Stark suggests. “I guess? I've never actually been clear.”

“Alien,” the doctor says. “There's no physical reason you shouldn't be able to speak.” 

As if Loki did not already know this! This is all they have at their disposal? If they have been wasting his time –

“Hey, hey, hey,” Stark says, holding up his hands, placating Loki. “Untwist the panties. You're new to the inner workings here, so let me fill you in. We don't have a habit of letting tiny inconveniences like something being technically impossible get us down. Believe me, Moki, we're just getting started.”

So begins days of study and tests, with each seeming to bring a new technological fix Stark has devised – collars, pens, an assortment of devices that should override whatever magic has stolen Loki's voice. And as each device fails, Loki wonders if this was a fool's errand from the start – that the devices cannot retrieve what is securely sealed realms away by ancient magic these mortals cannot possibly comprehend.

A week later, after Loki has once again been delivered to and strapped to the metal chair, Thor enters. The others are nowhere in sight. “They are on a mission,” he explains. “They fear that you're behind it. That this has all been a diversion. But I have allayed such fears, so do not worry.” 

Thor studies Loki, and there's that sad look again. “You wish to know why they are aiding you?”

Yes! Loki is no more close to determining what Thor must've said to sway them. Thor heads to one of the computers and starts to use it. He is slow and deliberate in his task, brow furrowed, like a glacier to how Stark and the doctor make the technology dance. But he is using the computer all the same. When did Thor learn Midgardian technology? In between moments of being set on fire by his wayward, no-longer-brother, Loki supposes.

After a few minutes, Thor says, “I was able to show them at last what I have known for ages.” He turns the monitor to Loki. It displays an image from one of the cylinder cell's security feeds. Loki has his hands wrapped around his neck and is feigning fright. That is, he'd meant to feign fright to persuade Thor to his cause.

But Loki is familiar with his own expressions, and his scared, lonely image on the monitor is not feigning anything.

Thor walks to Loki's side and cups Loki's face in his hands. “Let me help you,” he says. “Loki, I beg of you, let me _finally_ help you.”

That's when Loki realizes what was strange about watching his beating heart. Each time it thumped on the monitor, there was no corresponding thump in his ears. Somehow, Loki did not receive his missing half of a heart in exchange for his tongue. He lost the half he had, after all.

_You're too late, brother_ , Loki thinks, without a twinge of regret. Too late by far. _We welcome you home, Loki-king_ , Jötunheimr whispers.

* * *

_Then_

There is, of course, a feast. This is how most every altercation with the Dwarves ends. True war has never broken out between Asgard and Nidavellir. Tensions, yes, and competition – slights and insults and scuffles. But not war. Not devastation. If this day had gone worse for Loki, this almost certainly would still have held true. There would not have been war over one death – even a royal one, and particularly not one Loki brought on by himself. What it would have been, instead, was one more weight on an already precariously balanced scale, one more grudge, one more reason later called upon to retroactively justify future bloodshed. But Loki, as usual, talked himself both in and out of a dangerous predicament, and all either realm will have to look back upon is a feast where Aesir and Dwarf sat side by side. 

The Dwarves, Brokk and Eitri and the Ivaldson brothers, sit among the Aesir, drinking and laughing and regaling one another with loud stories. Loki sits at the royal head table overlooking the feast, with chin high and unblinking sight focused straight ahead, his lips sewn tightly closed. A plate stacked with thick slabs of ribs, candied yams, rich stuffing, and a goblet filled to the brim with fine mead sits untouched before him.

The evening drags.

After the queen announces that she will retire for the night, she stops beside Loki's seat. She is beautiful, his mother, tall and elegant, her hair a bouquet of perfect gold corkscrews. Not for the first time, Loki regrets that he seems to have not taken after her at all. He sees nothing of himself when he looks at her features, not a similar line from the curve of their cheekbones to the whirls in their ears, not a shared fleck of color in their irises, and he knows the reverse must also be true. Frigga must not see anything of herself when she studies her second born son.

Her hand reaches out to hover just beneath his chin and guide his face up toward her even though her fingertips don't quite touch his skin. There is sorrow in her eyes, as there usually is when she regards Loki. For a moment, he thinks she means to unthread his lips; the leather is spelled so that it can be undone by any hand but his own. But Frigga merely spends a long moment staring at his shut lips. Then she sighs, a sorrowful sound to match her sorrowful eyes, and she leans down to brush a gentle kiss against Loki's temple.

For a while after she's left in a quiet sweep of her gown, Loki continues to keep his head tilted up and to the side, as if his mother's fingers still hold him in place. Then he faces forward again, once more staring blankly over the cheerful, feasting crowd.

* * *

Several hours into the feast with several hours yet to go, Loki excuses himself with a brief nod in his father's direction. He ends up back in his rooms, thankfully far enough from the main hall that only the slightest sounds of carousing reach him. He lights the fireplace, building the crackling flames until even that sound is muffled, and then he folds himself down on the thick rug in front of the fire. 

Loki's body temperature has always been a fickle thing. Sometimes the barest heat seems to sear him, and other times a touch of could will bury so far to his bones he may as well be frostbitten in a blizzard. Sometimes he thinks he will never be warm enough, and sometimes he is unclear whether that is a distressing thought or a comforting one.

“Was this another of your games, brother?” Thor asks from the doorway. He comes forward and seats himself in front of Loki, blocking Loki's view of the fireplace. “I don't think you're as skilled at them as you believe. Although it doesn't matter, I suppose. You were never in any true danger.” Loki frowns, surprised that Thor could be so oblivious. If the Dwarves had been in less generous moods, no amount of semantics and charm would have saved him. And father would not have raised a finger as they severed his head from his body. “I would have killed them,” Thor says. “They would not have gotten a blade within an inch of your neck before I'd smashed their skulls down to their stomaches. I'd even have used my new hammer. Test it out, let them see how pleased I am with it.”

It is a lovely sentiment, one Loki knows Thor believes would have come to pass, but matters like these are no so easy to escape. Tensions between their peoples, and Loki having given his word. Father would never have allowed Thor to interfere in such a manner. “Father,” Thor says, like Loki's mind is plain to him, “would've tried to stop me. Would've made a great show of it. And he would've somehow been just a moment too late to stop me. I would never have allowed your death.” Thor kneels closer, placing one hand against the back of Loki's head to bring their foreheads together; his other hand finds Loki's waist, thumb rubbing slow circles against Loki's hip.

“You are careless with yourself,” Thor says, quietly now and less steady, as if their nearness shelters him and so he can speak freely. “And I cannot – that you would even make such a wager. That you would throw your life away on a whim. You mustn't – Loki, I cannot stand the thought that I would lose you by any means, least of all by your own carelessness.” Thor's breath puffs against his cheeks, and Thor keeps talking, murmuring, that Loki cannot be so careless, what if Thor is not around and Loki unable to talk himself out of danger. Loki is too special to him, too beautiful, and Thor is so close now that the words are felt against the skin of Loki's lips. 

If Loki's presence is felt, it's as a slim leak in a roof, a rivulet of water sliding through a crack in stone, a leaky faucet that no one can find. Loki is found by looking in corners, and half the time he's just a trick of the light. Thor floods cities with his presence, heedless of damage or casualties. They are all of them at the beck and call of this golden son's whims.

And Thor just keeps talking, closer and closer and hands warm on Loki's neck and waist; beautiful things and flattering things, a deluge of words that Thor must've kept to himself for a very long time and now cannot stem, and when Loki can tolerate no more lovely words he places a finger over Thor's mouth and taps once. A green cloth, gossamer-thin, folds out from his finger and wraps around Thor's mouth, knotting neatly behind his head. It's wide, covering Thor's face from chin to just below his nose. But it's just cloth. One would have to choose to be silenced to not speak through it.

Thor feels the material with his fingers. Then he says, “Another condition?”

Is it? All this heat, the crackling fire and Thor's warm hands, has made Loki dizzy. But Loki nods his head, and Thor once again unexpectedly and easily acquiesces. Then they are kissing through the cloth and leather thread, and Loki realizes, understands. Thor pushes Loki back onto the rug, pressing him down, and Loki allows himself to drown. Thor tears through their clothes, and Loki helps, melting the clothing from their bodies and throwing it carelessly across the room. Thor's large, warm hands are rough and possessive, mapping Loki's sides, his neck, teasing and tracing; there is no shyness, no hesitation, and Loki feels none in return. They are too well known to one another.

Thor's fingers coax stickiness from Loki's cock and smear it across Loki's chest and thighs – he brings Loki's hand to his own length, encouraging Loki to do the same. Loki tries to open his mouth to gasp at the heat, the loveliness of Thor's touch, but the thread holds and bites into his lips, causing the skin to tear and bleed. 

Thor moans, the sound pulled from deep within him and then he freezes, his eyes flicking to Loki's, alarmed. What worry? Loki wonders, then realizes Thor believes he's broken Loki's rules. Loki considers, still tracing precome through the tangles of golden hair across Thor's chest, and then he languidly arches underneath Thor, stretching his arms above his head and moaning, long and low and decadent. The corners of Thor's eyes crinkle and what's visible of his cheeks above the cloth flushes deeper red. 

This must be all the permission Thor requires as he fits himself neatly in the space between Loki's thighs. Loki has had many lovers of either gender and varying species, and he is equally pleased to lay above or below a body, to guide or be guided. Thor's preferences, Loki imagines, are less flexible, and Loki is content with the heavy weight above him. He grabs one of Thor's busy hands and presses their palms together; when their hands separate, Thor's is covered in slick oil. Thor's fingers find and prepare him while Loki slides his fingers through Thor's hair and brings their mouths together in another rough slide. 

The fire to one side, spitting sparks, and Thor's thick heat surrounding him inside and out, searing Loki; his heart pounds in his ears. But for all this fire, there is a frozen part of Loki that remains untouched and unmelted. 

There is only the harsh breath of air from their noses, Loki's choked off gasps, and Thor's languid groans, to accompany Thor's rough slide in and out as Loki's hips roll and his legs tighten in pulses around Thor. What would Thor say, if Loki imposed no condition of silence? Would the mouth biting Loki's ear, the tongue tracing the shell through a spit-soaked cloth, be gasping confessions of love beyond that of brothers? More flattery? Would he still say Loki is beautiful when he is flushed with passion instead of fear for Loki's life?

Undone and frustrated by Loki's teasing undulations, Thor's hands once more frame his hips, forcing Loki to be still and simply accept Thor's thrusts. Demands, perhaps? The unreasonable kind Thor likes to impose, like that Loki should never change. The kind Thor demands and assumes Loki will agree to, never noticing that Loki never actually does. What promises? Loki wonders, his nails scratching down Thor's back, deep, drawing blood and moans from them both. That Loki should have no other lovers? That Loki must love Thor in this way in return? Or that Loki mustn't ever wager his head away again, or Thor will have no resort but to ravish Loki into sated compliance at each indiscretion? Thor is clumsy enough in his understanding of negotiation and incentives that should Thor seek to impose the last, it would be years before he realized how poorly thought out his threat.

Thor remains buried in Loki for some time after he's released his come deep inside Loki – past when Loki's own release splatters onto Thor's chest, which he scoops up and smears across his bloody, threaded lips, causing Thor to groan and kiss Loki again, pressing his lips harshly into Loki's as if he could taste Loki through the cloth.

When their breath steadies, Thor reaches one hand to Loki's mouth and carefully begins to pull out the thread. Though he tries to be gentle, Loki still feels more tears, more slides of blood down his neck. Feeling an odd mix of sated and petulant, Loki takes out each bite of pain on Thor's back, nails finding and scratching down the same lines he'd traced earlier. Thor has to pause in his task, eyes fluttering and hardness twitching inside Loki, each time Loki does. 

The thread tossed to the side, Loki carefully stretches his mouth, feels the shredded skin. Thor carefully pulls out and sits back on his heels, still between Loki's legs. He removes the cloth and turns it over in his hands before holding it out to Loki, who disappears it with a wave of his hand. Loki touches his own chest slowly, feeling stickiness and sweat but no particular urge to do anything about it. Watching Loki's hands closely, Thor appears equally disinclined.

After a languid time, Loki nudges Thor to stand. He does, holding a hand to help Loki rise. An ache has settled in Loki's belly, some insidious unease, but before he can think of how to encourage Thor to go, Thor brushes an easy kiss against Loki's bloody lips, dresses in his discarded clothes, and takes his leave with a pleased smile on his face.

_Thank you_ , Loki thinks, _for knowing_. 

There are even odds between that being all the passion ever shared between them, Thor's point made, and Thor finding his way to Loki's bed every night until a different whim takes him in a different direction. Half of Loki wants very, very much for Thor to find his bed again. The other half wouldn't particularly mind either way.

Loki is not left long in uncertainty. Thor joins him the following morning while Loki is still groggy from sleep, his blankets kicked to the floor. Another too warm night, and he was just feeling a chill and considering retrieving the blankets when a more preferable warmth encases him. Arms bracketing Loki's head, their pelvises fitting snugly together, Thor smiles down at him expectantly. Loki doesn't immediately understand for what Thor is waiting, has to think about it long enough that Thor's smile begins to fade and worry creeps into his expression, before Loki realizes. 

Ah. The condition Loki had imposed in a moment of panic. Interesting. Thor perks up as soon as Loki taps a cloth across his lips, and he doesn't look surprised when Loki does the same to himself. Then they kiss and press and writhe until the cloths are translucent with saliva and sticky with come. There are no more worried hesitations after that. Again and again Thor finds him, in bed, in bath, in shadowed hallway, outside in the mud under a torrid rainfall, and they twist in sweaty pleasure.

Any condition, any boundary, Loki seeks to impose is met with eager compliance. One day Thor sneaks up on him when Loki is visiting with Sleipnir, snaking his arms around Loki's waist and fitting himself to Loki's back. Loki raises his hands to block Sleipnir's eyes and nods his chin sharply at the entranceway; the doors slam open. Thor accepts his dismissal with grace, but he takes the time to lick the blush across Loki's cheek. And as Thor slips away, his teeth catch one of Loki's earlobes and tug.

“Never you mind,” Loki snaps to Sleipnir after Thor is gone. Sleipnir just snorts in response. 

Another afternoon he presses Thor onto the bed and magics cloths to match the ones on their faces to tie Thor's arms and legs to the four posts. Loki kneels between Thor's spread thighs and presses his cloth-covered mouth to Thor's cock. Thor gasps and jerks, easily breaking an arm free; Thor frowns at his arm, puzzled at the broken restraint. He was clearly anticipating more resistance – or any resistance at all. Loki simply guides Thor's arm back down and reattaches the cloth to the post, and Thor's breath catches at the implication.

So while Loki pleases and teases Thor's erection, mouthing along the vein, fingers squeezing and sliding, nails pressing and scratching along the base and behind Thor's heavy balls, all while the cloth allows no more than the head of Thor's cock to fit between his lips, Thor pants and gasps, his every muscle trembling in stark, glorious relief as he fights desperately not to tear the gossamer-thin restraints. When Thor groans, deep and harsh, and his come finally paints Loki's face, Loki sees a small line of red trailing underneath Thor's cloth and down his neck. Thor must have bitten his lip or tongue to also be silent in addition to still. Loki, already coiled and tense, feels himself throb deliciously at the knowledge.

Crawling up Thor's body, Loki straddles Thor's shoulders and places the tip of his cock against Thor's mouth. Thor sucks lazily at the cockhead through the green cloth while Loki strips his cock red with one hand, the other hand bracing himself against the headboard.

Thor has flooded Loki's life with wave after wave of senseless pleasure. Thor tied up at Loki's mercy, Loki kneeling before Thor's spread thighs, wrapped together on the rug in front of Loki's fireplace, again and again Thor finds him and has him. In training halls, at the dinner feast, among Thor's warriors three and at market trips, little changes. Their trysts must be common knowledge, but incest is hardly something noteworthy among the realms' royal families. In any case, it was already usual to see Loki and Thor standing close, or Thor's hand on Loki's shoulder or arm. Thor is always touching Loki, and Loki is always allowing it. If Thor's touches linger, if his hand cups Loki's hip instead of shoulder, no one has the nerve to comment. And if their mother and father object, it is never brought to Loki's attention. 

But it will not last, Loki knows. He hopes for both their sake that it will be because Thor has finally sated himself with Loki's body, has finally convinced himself that Loki is alive and will be more careful with his life. He hopes it will not be because Thor removes the gossamer-thin cloth between them, insisting Loki hear his words and demanding words in return.

Because if that happens, Loki Silvertongue will not have the words Thor wants to hear.


	4. Chapter 4

_Now_

There is a second that lasts for lifetimes when Loki must decide, when there is only the feel of Thor's warm hands on Loki's face, the hum of Midgardian technology around them, and the emptiness in Loki's chest. Except there is no choice – or, if there was, it was one made long ago. Sometime long after Loki's cold birth and cold abandonment on a cold temple floor, but long before Loki traded his tongue for the roots of Jötunheimr that crept through his pores and now line and shape him like a second skeleton. No – there is no choice, only the vague sense that at one time there would've been, and deciding it would've been complicated by Thor's warm, gentle hands.

 _You left me first_ , Loki thinks with cold, sharp precision.

He sees this inevitable conclusion reflected in Thor's widening eyes and sudden tension before he fully realizes he's reached it. The agents by the doorway stir, alarmed by Thor's reaction, and their hands drift toward their weapons; but Loki's smile is only for Thor.

“Loki! Loki no!” Thor shouts, lunging forward to hold onto Loki even as the agents draw their weapons and bark rapidly into their communication links. But too late – all too late and too slow. Loki-snake is already slithering down from the metal chair, the cuffs that were around his neck and wrists clanging as they hit the floor. Thor grabs desperately for the twisting, writhing form, clumsy as he's trying to catch without harming.

“Do not attack him!” Thor shouts at the agents, who ignore his order and fire their tranquilizers. But no matter, Loki-snake is already disappearing down an air vent in the floor. A shrill siren starts to sound. 

Interesting that Thor knew and anticipated the flaw in Stark's magic-negating technology. Loki's magic is a skill, cultivated and honed to devastating perfection, but his ability to shift shapes is inherent. And the conflation between the two is one Loki had actively encouraged in Stark's designs, the idea that Loki can step out of his magic as easily as Stark does his suit. And while SHIELD's monitors may mistake his biological readings during shifting as magical in origin, the act itself is harmless and Stark's technology detects and recognizes harmless magic just one – second – too – late to matter. He'd kept the secret for a special occasion. The humans are now welcome to add this detail to their files marked God of Mischief, not that it will do them any good. Loki is changing games, and these humans have no pieces on this board. 

_You should have told them, Thor._ Loki-snake slips through the air vents, looking for ways up. _I would have if it had been me in your place._ The holding cell was two floors below ground level, and the testing room two floors below that. Having previously studied the headquarters' schematics, Loki knows that all of the vents, exhausts, and plumbing open at ground level and are heavily monitored, and some are electrified or otherwise protected. Before Loki-snake hit the floor they'll have called up every relevant camera feed, will have started to evacuate the civilian personnel and triple the protection around whatever all-powerful trinkets they're currently hoarding on site. Efficient, efficient little ants these humans are, and Loki cannot resist adding a touch more chaos than his escape strictly requires. 

Loki-snake slithers out of the vents and to a main floor, multiplying into a hoard of Loki-mice that immediately scurry madly between black, polished loafers and military-issue boots. The mice-copies find stairwells, elevators, holes in the walls, all searching for up, up, up – two floors to go. 

Tranquilizers fire, boots stomp, and some agents crawl on the floor, slapping at the too-fast shapes and hoping to find the original copy. The felled copies simply dissolve. The remaining Loki-mice congregate and combine into Loki-cat one floor below ground, and Loki-cat slinks along walls and finds an upward-going elevator to hide in. When Loki-cat emerges a wall of agents greet him, and Loki-cat hisses – no, tries to hiss, but no sound emerges. Loki-cat is stalled, stunned long enough for the agents to begin closing in, for one to hold out some piece of Stark's technology that buzzes.

But Loki-cat recovers and leaps at the agents, and while the agents lift their weapons to track him Loki-cat breaks apart into three dozen Loki-bats. Some of them fly dizzying circle around the agents, leathery wings flapping wildly, some of them back-track to cause more confusion down below and to possibly get a glimpse of those all-powerful trinkets, and the rest fly a looping, zig-zagging patterns for the exit.

The Loki-bats are at the main entrance, but the pursuing agents have fallen back and only Thor blocks the path. The agents must've thought Thor mad to think Loki would've been so blatant as to try escape through the front door. The Loki-bats merge into Loki-Aesir. Thor has Mjölnir in his grip, his stance wide, ready to fight to keep Loki there, but his shoulders fall and Mjölnir drops to his side before Loki-Aesir is even fully formed. Thor knows him too well, Loki thinks without any fondness.

“One day I will mend what is broken between us,” Thor says. “And I shall let no one – least of all you – stop me.”

Loki's copy blows Thor a kiss before melting away. And Loki, who had shifted to fly-form while sending a snake copy to the floor, and who had been watching the ensuing chaos in SHIELD's headquarters through his copies' eyes, is already cities away. Loki flicks his hand, allowing the remainder of the copies to likewise dissolve. 

_You are welcome to try, brother._

* * *

Loki, finally, goes home.

Jötunheimr reaches for him, cradles him in its snowy embrace. He arrives at the empty, cragged field overlooked by the main throne hall, where once upon a time Loki first learned of his true heritage while Thor and his warriors three made a mockery of the truce between this realm and Asgard. Loki breathes in the chill air, long, deep breaths. He reaches down and unfastens his boots, toeing them off and tossing them carelessly away. He curls his toes in the snow, feeling those insidious, welcoming roots creep and spiral up his legs, reconnecting him. Grounding him. This is where he's meant to be.

Loki pays no mind to the handful of Jötnar who have appeared soundlessly in the distance to observe him; he simply luxuriates in the snow between his toes and each wonderfully frozen inhale and exhale.

When the skin on his feet begins to bleed to blue, Loki starts walking the meters that separate him from the tall throne. As he walks he removes his helmet and throws it aside, unhooks his cloak and lets it slither down his back, flicks open his armor and lets that too fall as it may. Layer after layer is removed and left in a trail behind him, some of the thrown garments hitting the face of one or another of the increasing number of gathered Jötnar. 

Two small shadows appear alongside him. Loki gazes up to see Odin's eyes, Huginn and Muninn, also keeping pace. Good. Loki has dropped the spells that shield him from Heimdall's sight. Let them all be witness. With each step his skin bleeds more to blue, and his eyes shine over in red. Patterns raise along his flesh from head to ankle – his Jötnar birthmarks that mirror Laufey's – and two pointed, twisted horns grow out from his forehead. By the time he is before Helblindi, Loki wears nothing but his trousers and his full Jötnar form. 

Helblindi studies him from his tall throne, cheek resting in one hand, the other hand's fingers tapping against the armrest – bored. The now large crowd of Jötnar following Loki's leisurely approach gather in a loose circle around him.

A true meeting between a Jötnar and his king would be spoken through winter-song, but Helblindi flashes his teeth in a brief, cruel smile and says in the All-Tongue, “Whatever would a little lost sorcerer-bird be doing here?” Loki stares, hands loose at his sides. Patient. “We have heard you are no longer wanted in the golden realm. I hope you do not mean to try your luck here.”

The gathered Jötnar barely shift, just watch, faces blank. They do not look at Loki and see something to fear. If Helblindi bids them to attack, there will be no one vying for the honor. Their indifference was expected and understandable, but not Helblindi's. Does Helblindi not know Loki slew their father – or even that they shared one? Does he know of the ceremony he was denied, with the Casket held far away in Asgard's possession? Or that Jötunheimr will never accept a hearted king?

“If you are bold enough to wear Jötunheimr's skin, you should have the grace to bow before her king, little lost bird.”

Loki bows his head slightly and then carefully sinks to his knees. Helblindi straightens, delight brightening his red eyes.

There must be a special knot in his life thread that the Nornir tied just to ensure Loki is always surrounded by brothers aspiring too quickly to wear crowns for which they are not fit. The difference, of course, is that Loki does not mean to allow this brother the opportunity to grow into his.

Loki places his bare hands against the ice floor, follows the trail of roots to the Casket deep underground, and pulls its power into himself. The Casket easily, gladly acquiesces. _Loki-king_ , his ancestors murmur. And with the Casket amplifying his voice, Loki screams through the ice, floods the mind of every Jötnar with images of how he turned the might of the Bifröst onto this realm and the resulting devastation, followed by a simple message echoed by every ancestor locked in the Casket of Ancient Winters and conveyed even in the ineloquent winter-song:

_I did this. I will finish what I started if even one of you fails to bow and call me king._

Helblindi on his tall throne turns a very pale shade of blue.

The Jötnar have been ruled by heartless monsters for a very, very long time, can remember no other way to be. And not one of them would fail to recognize the Casket's influence underlining Loki's message. When Loki rises, every gathered Jötnar bends at the knees. Not one of them stands in his path when Loki strolls over to where Helblindi sits, no longer straight-spined. 

Soon after and still with his entourage of watchful Jötnar, Loki takes Helblindi's severed head and places it on the ground where the Bifröst points. The Jötnar now have sharp interest in their eyes. Huginn and Muninn circle overhead.

 _For your collection, All-Father_ , Loki means to convey by his open-armed gesture and the slight bow he presents to the circling ravens. _Although I fear this one won't have any wisdom to bestow._

Now to see to Loki's realm. It will take more than a dramatic entrance to truly secure his place. Loki may never have wanted to be king – _There is no want when you are born to it_ , the Casket protests – but he has spent his existence being readied for the role.

He appoints envoys and personal guards, as well as advisors to educate him on the necessary formalities and customs he wasn't exposed to growing up in Asgard. He arranges audiences with all of the tribe leaders. The first few are terse and difficult, but Loki's reputation for ripping the eyes out of terse and difficult leaders swiftly begins to precede him and each meeting goes smoother than the one prior. He orders temples and settlements reopened and rebuilt, communication lines reestablished, and land redivided. The Jötnar are pleased enough to have direction and purpose, but delighted to have a ruler tinged with ruthless madness. They have long been denied their heartless king. 

In addition to the necessary world-building, Loki organizes frequent tournaments, either between Jötnar or between Jötnar and the ice dragons or some mix of both; fights or feats of strength and cunning or races. Sometimes they are to the death, sometimes to first blood, and all times Loki changes the rules no less than twice before each tournament's conclusion. Loki wants his people to be nimble and unquestioning. 

Asgard attempts to contact him, but letters are sent to freeze in the sea unread and messengers are fed to the ice dragons. Sometimes, when it suits Loki's whims, it is the other way around. If Loki were to make hostile overtures to other peoples, Odin would intervene with force, but Loki merely builds and oversees his kingdom within the confines of his icy realm. Odin has no cause. 

While Jötunheimr flourishes around him, Loki dedicates himself to learning the Casket's secrets – how to call upon it, to use it, how to send out his own roots through the ice to ensnare his people to his own whims as thoroughly as the Casket has ensnared him to its. Soon he can distinguish individual voices within the Casket – this one Laufey, that one Thyrm, this rusty grumble Ymir himself – and can consult with them, choosing which voices to heed and which to ignore. He begins to understand the Casket's power and how it can follow him throughout the realms, how it amplifies his own strengths, and how it uses the sacrificed hearts to act as Jötunheimr's heart. How Loki gave Jötunheimr a voice that can be heard from Asgard to Niflheimr. There is only one inquiry the ancients will not answer: why they took his tongue at all. 

Sometimes – infrequently, quietly – Loki wonders why, if the Jötnar kings are granted eternal life in this exchange, so many of them occupy the Casket. _This is why those foolish enough to lose their heart will be always defeated by those who cultivate and treasure strong ones_ , that gods-be-damned book said, but the book has been wrong about so many things.

He learns, too, why the ceremony is performed when the king-to-be is but an infant rather than at coronation. Because even with the silence and stillness beneath Loki's ribcage, there is still his heart's shadow; and while he feels no remorse for his coldness or the lives he's taken or the destruction he's caused and will cause yet, he is plagued by the certainty that once his actions would have consumed him in torment. A child who knows no other way to be would not bear such a burden. But, conversely, a child grown this way would not have such cause as drives Loki, only tedious obligation. 

So Loki builds and schemes and waits and waits and waits. Jötunheimr and the ancients within the Casket demand war, revenge, bloodshed against Asgard and her king and then the remaining realms, stopping finally to take Midgard that was denied to them, and Loki will oblige – oh, he will, and it will be so terrible they will call it the Ragnarok. It will be the worst thing he has ever done or will do. But it is not on the shoulders of Asgard's current king he means for his wrath to fall.

The ravens circle ever overhead, but there are no words spoken for them to overhear.

* * *

_Then_

Loki is dozing in the common room, the evening sun casting the room's large, plush lounges and fruit-laden tables in oranges and purples, when Thor sweeps in. Volstagg, Hogun, Fandral, and Sif are close at his heels, and all five of them are aglow with excitement and victory, already talking over one another as they recount their latest adventure.

“There you are, Loki!” Thor beams, moving forward to sit next to Loki while the others find seats on facing divans. “We have had the most thrilling time. I am sorry you could not join us!”

“Hold on, Thor, how can you even think to start with all of us with empty hands? We need drinks first, of course!” Volstagg insists, calling for a servant to bring them all tall goblets of mead.

“I would think you've had your fill of liquids,” Loki says, eyebrows raised. Hogun snorts, and Sif grins. Volstagg just waves a hand and says, “Nonsense! There is no such thing!”

Father has of late been insisting that Thor spend more time acquainting himself with the other realms – more particularly, to do so on peaceful terms and without Loki along to as as liaison. This excursion to the underwater Nóatún was the longest yet at nearly four months – not a length of time Loki is accustomed to thinking of as significant, but how the days dragged. There didn't exist sufficient distraction for Loki. And he couldn't even surreptitiously follow along, either. Not since the prior trip to Álfheimr, when Loki had given into temptation within a week and had caught up with Thor and trailed after him in eagle-form. Loki had had no intention of interfering, had only been going to follow for a day or two at most, but when he'd paused to rest on a tree branch Huginn and Muninn had settled to either side of him. “Let me clarify for you, my son,” Odin had said after the ravens had escorted Loki back. “You are not to accompany Thor in any form or by any means.”

Accepting the wine that is being offered, Loki drinks the cup in one long swallow, holding out his goblet for another fill. He doesn't usually care to over-drink, but these past few months just lasted for so ridiculously long...

“Well, don't keep me in suspense,” he says. 

“They were very hospitable hosts, the merfolk,” Thor says. “You must get along well with them. They like their jokes.”

Loki scoffs. “The merfolk? Arrogant fish to the last of them. They fed you squid eyes, did they?”

“And crab shells and seaslug hearts,” Fandral says with a dramatic shudder. “They insisted on it.”

“I still fail to see what you all are moaning about. They were delicious!” Volstagg says. Fandral punches his shoulder. “We weren't supposed to eat them! It was a lark!”

While Volstagg and Fandral argue the merits of squid eyes and seaslug hearts and appreciating exotic delicacies, Loki slips off his boots and lays back, draping his ankles over one of Thor's thighs, his toes curling into the other. Thor uses his bent knees as an armrest, his other hand resting over Loki's bare ankles. 

Sif heads to one of the tables and picks up an apple, which she tosses up and down in her hand. “Oh, enough of that!” she says, throwing the apple between Fandral and Volstagg to break them apart. “There will be time enough to tell more of that later! I want to hear Thor tell Loki the best part.” She settles back in a seat, unconsciously beginning to twirl locks of her gold-spun wig between her fingers, as she has been prone to doing ever since donning it.

Fandral grins. “When he wrestled the whale, you mean?”

“Of course when he wrestled the whale!”

Loki taps his toes against Thor's thigh. “You wrestled a whale?”

“I wrestled a whale,” Thor confirms, smile broadening. 

Signaling the servant, Loki says, “I'm going to need more drink to handle this.” He downs half the cup, finally beginning to feel the alcohol brightening further what is already turning into a bright, cheerful evening – far more so than he'd anticipated. “Please tell me it wasn't a – a – a sacred whale and they've declared some one thousand year war on Asgard in retribution.”

“Njördr insisted! He said you're not a true warrior until you've felled one!”

“Are whales even vicious?” Loki asks.

Hogun, who had been as usual quietly observing his fellow warriors' antics in stoic resignation and secret affection, says, “They are when someone sends a bolt of lightening down their blowhole.”

“What was I to do? I may as well have been a fly. It didn't notice me for an hour!” Thor protests while Loki laughs delightedly.

“Wait, wait,” Loki says, sloshing wine on the floor and lounge as he gestures. “You're starting from the middle. I insist you start from the beginning. Leave out no detail.”

“And then you'll have to compose a poem depicting my grand victory over the whale,” Thor says.

“It will be my most epic work yet,” Loki agrees.

So Volstagg and Fandral leap up to act out the scene – Volstagg plays the whale with exaggerated, lumbering movements and Fandral wildly swings his goblet as if it is Mjölnir – and Sif provides commentary and plays the part of the seafolk, who had shouted unhelpful suggestions to Thor as he wrestled. Loki sinks further into the cushions, enjoying the warmth of the alcohol in his blood and the warmth of Thor seeping into his skin.

When the mighty tale is over, Volstagg and Fandral collapsing back into their seats as Hogun politely claps, Loki says, “As these are journeys of enlightenment, I should like to know what you learned, dear brother.”

“Whales are not honorable opponents,” Thor answers solemnly. “Do not fight them.”

Fandral raises his goblet in a toast, and the warriors three and Sif call out, “Here, here!”

After telling Loki of the more mundane aspects of their excursion, Thor turns to Loki and says, “And you, brother? How did you pass your time in our absence?”

“There was little to entertain me,” Loki says. “I made do with a trip to the Ironwood and imposed upon Angrboda. I count myself lucky she was in a mood to humor me.” Loki takes another drink, carelessly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and letting the empty goblet roll to the floor. He smirks and adds, “So I suppose one could say that we were both wrestling whales.”

It had been good to visit his giantess. Although Loki can only tolerate her company for brief stretches, she tolerates his for even briefer. She's never forgiven him for allowing the All-Father to banish away their three monster children, but Loki – who had himself been banished from the Ironwood for the duration of each of her pregnancies – never knew the three as young, awkward colts, only as full-grown beasts. He had been unable to dredge up the sympathy necessary to persuade his father to a more lenient sentence. “I will bear you no more children to be cast aside,” Angrboda had sniffed, as if Loki had requested she bear him any children, let alone three. But it was just as well. “The realms are only so large. Perhaps you might turn your interests from giantesses to dwarves,” father had pointedly commented when he'd banished Jörmungand to the Midgardian ocean.

But this does remind Loki – it is almost time to visit Hel. Once every twenty-five years for one day they are permitted to meet in an empty, echoing limbo-place, half-way between her realm and the living one. Loki brings tea and the sweetest cakes he can find, since Hel has no sweet things in Niflheimr, and she whispers dead men's secrets in his ears while her fingers grow sticky with icing. In exchange, she asks Loki to regale her with tales of Thor's exploits. “It is like knowing the sun's glow when you speak about him, daddy,” she'd explained. Speaking of Thor, his hand has grown still on Loki's ankles.

Loki props himself up on his elbows and glances around, blinking. The warriors three are staring at the floor in unexpectedly awkward silence, while Thor stares straight ahead and Sif glares at him.

“Thor?” Loki asks. “What –?”

“It's been a tiring journey and it grows late. I should retire,” Thor announces, abruptly standing and so in the process overturning Loki to the floor. Loki catches himself on his hands and look up just in time to see Thor already at the doorway. A snap of Thor's cape and he is gone. Loki turns to the others, mind too muddled to follow what's happened.

“Angrboda,” Sif says stiffly. “How is she?”

His giantess? “As she ever is,” Loki says.

“Well. That does explain why the two of you get along so well.” She stands. “We should be retiring as well.” Her hands move as usual to twist her golden locks, but she stills. Then she pulls the wig off, shaking out her own fall of dull, brown hair. She drops the wig in front of Loki as her boots thump past him, the warriors three not far behind.

* * *

Loki wakes the next morning with a splitting headache and a sour ache in his stomach. Thor avoids him for days, and Loki, already denied Thor's presence for four months, is in no mood to tolerate this treatment. For once, he goes to Thor, finding his brother reclining in an armchair in his suites. Loki wordlessly shuts the door behind him and approaches Thor, who watches him with narrowed eyes.

By Thor's expression, there is nothing Loki can say to ease Thor's temper. Instead, he straddles Thor's hips and cradles Thor's face in his hands, bringing their lips together. The familiar green cloths blossom from where their lips meet to wrap around and knot behind their necks. After a moment's stillness, Thor sighs and tugs Loki closer, hands shaping Loki's thighs and tongue meeting his through the cloths. Loki drags his hand down Thor's chest, scratching lightly, and then cups Thor's length through his clothes and begins to press and kneed. Thor hums into his mouth, pleased, and then suddenly Thor places a hand against Loki's chest and pushes him back. Loki once more is sprawled unceremoniously to the floor as Thor stands, running his hands through his blond hair.

“No. Loki – I. No.” Thor removes the green cloth and lets it fall to the floor, where it melts away. “I have been thinking, and I – I think I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?” Loki repeats. 

“Yes. I – Loki, I am at fault. I think I knew I wanted more from you than you could give, and your silence between us suited me because you could not speak to disillusion me.”

“Is this about Angrboda? Thor, you must know that she owns nothing of me and you own everything. You needn't feel threatened by her place in my life.”

“So you knew? That I know of her? And of Sigyn? You never had any intention of hiding these affairs from me?”

“If you wished for my fidelity you had only ever to ask for it. And you needn't even swear your own in return. I know how it is for you and Lady Sif.”

“Sif? You believe I still lay with her?”

“Don't you?”

“Not since – Loki, I would have to ask for your fidelity? You wouldn't think to give it?”

Why is Loki even fighting this, he wonders? He knew it was coming and had no illusions himself about their intimacy. But when he'd imagined this day, it was supposed to be due to Thor's shortcomings – his impulsiveness, his inattention, his naivety. But this is beginning to feel like the fault is solely Loki's. 

He raises himself from the floor and again approaches Thor, but this time only to lay a wary hand on Thor's arm. He's not shrugged off, at least. “I am not particular,” Loki says. “However you wish things to be, I am happy to oblige. I shall avoid the Ironwood, Thor. It is no matter. No one will be more pleased than Angrboda, I assure you.”

“And your love? Is that also something for which I would have to ask?”

Loki recoils, unexpectedly stung. “You _know_ I love you, Thor. How could you possibly think otherwise?”

Thor reaches for one of Loki's hands and raises it so he can study Loki's fingers, trace the shape of them. He doesn't meet Loki's eyes. “I know that you frequently say those words to me. And I know how easily lovely words come to you, and how rarely they match your true meaning.”

“What more could you ask of me? From me? My friendship, my heart, my fidelity – I give these all to you. What else is there?”

“But those are just words. You don't mean them, not how I would have you mean them. And it is to both of our detriments that I am forcing you to act as if you do.”

“I do!” Loki doesn't even understand why he has such a vehement need to defend himself and his feelings for Thor. “I swear I do!”

“Loki,” Thor says, slowly and carefully. He lets go of Loki's hand, and Loki lets his arm fall limply to his side. “Loki, I think you and I are better when we are not together in this way.”

Falling silent, Loki studies the tense line of Thor's shoulders. Loki is used to coldness seeping randomly through his veins, settling unexpectedly in his chest – even finds strange comfort in the chill. But the coldness that starts to crawl along Loki's skin offers him no comfort. “As you wish,” Loki says.

“But it is not –!” Thor cuts himself off. “Yes. I am truly sorry, Loki. But I think this is best for us.”

The return to some semblance of normalcy is not immediate. Thor cannot simply stop reaching to touch Loki in constant, little mundane ways, and Loki is too used to placing himself within Thor's easy reach. They cannot avoid each other at the dinner table, at functions, or in Asgard's halls. The warriors three and Sif – who never returns for her wig – are quick to blame Loki for Thor's heartbreak. And if their mother and father have any feelings at all on the matter, it is never brought to Loki's attention.

But Thor goes on longer and longer excursions, and the distance does them both good. Loki occupies himself in ways other than Angrboda's, Sigyn's, or anyone else's intimate company, although Thor assures him there is no need. They were brothers and friends for much longer than they were lovers, and they slowly relearn to live within those boundaries.

It might be a lie, however, to say that Thor's rejection isn't on Loki's mind when news of the coronation reaches him and he spends a long afternoon in the treasure room studying the relic that ever calls to him. That it isn't a consideration when he slips away to Jötunheimr and begins a rumor of an intriguing deficiency in Asgard's defenses that might just allow a handful of brave Jötnar souls to make an undetected entrance to the treasure room, and how perfect an opportunity Thor's coronation would make with all of Asgard distracted. That he is not thinking of an overbright boy hugging him and twirling him in circles when he arranges the guard rotation so that if a breach to the treasure room is indeed detected, Amund will be first to meet the threat.

On the day of Thor's coronation, both of them in their finest regalia, they wait for Thor to be called for his grand entrance. They banter as if things between them are as they ever were. Maybe Thor even thinks it is so, but all Loki can see are the cracks still between then. But Loki is doing this because Thor is not ready to be king. If anything else motivates him, Loki will take that secret to his grave, and not even Hel will be able to extract it from him. 

Loki can hear all of Asgard waiting, cheering, ready to celebrate their golden son's ascension. Let them all witness how far Thor has yet to climb to reach that tall throne. 

“I've looked forward to this day as long as you have, my brother, and my friend. Sometimes I'm envious. But never doubt that I love you,” Loki says, Thor's hand warm on his cheek. And feeling reckless, powerful, _justified_ , Loki grins and says playfully, “Now give us a kiss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more full-length chapter and then an epilogue after this. I'm hoping to finish writing them and have them both posted in maybe a week. :)
> 
> As a side note, there aren't words to express how much I wanted in the first part of this chapter to have Fury in the background screaming, “I have had it with these motherfucking Loki-snakes in my motherfucking SHIELD!” but alas it's just not that kind of a story. ;_; (For similar reasons, Loki brings Hel sweet cakes and not pudding.)


	5. Chapter 5

_Now_

And Victor had said Loki isn't capable of patience. _You would've enjoyed this, dear_ , Loki thinks to his long-gone once-ally. _You would've said you were proud I'd finally learned to stop playing games._

Loki has. No more games, no more petty battles. Just a war, and by the mad scrabbling at the temple entranceway, it sounds like the final piece is about to be placed into position. Two Jötnar drag into the temple the struggling, wildly bucking Sleipnir, who is wearing the muzzle Loki had designed specifically to inhibit his magics – he'd even borrowed some of Stark's theories when crafting it. When Sleipnir is close enough, Loki runs a finger down the long, grey face. Sleipnir recoils, shaking his head and neighing in distress.

This fidgeting will quickly becoming tiring. Loki flicks his wrist and ice reaches up to wrap around all eight legs, holding Sleipnir still. Better. Waving away the Jötnar so he is alone with his son, Loki circles Sleipnir, who has begun to shake. His son. That's why it had to be Sleipnir. A ceremony of intent, and out of all of the creatures that can name Loki as parent, from the three monsters Angrboda bore to the various Jötnar offspring he's begotten since taking over Jötunheimr, there is only one Loki has ever looked at and thought, _This is my son._

That Loki is currently hard-pressed to see anything more than a pathetically struggling beast is immaterial. _That's how I viewed you_ , Laufey murmurs.

It started with the tournaments, Loki ensuring that no part of them was kept from the watchful Huginn and Muninn. Sometimes Loki had one of his Jötnar dedicate a match to the benevolent All-Father. He let the ravens see him change the rules without reason, choose seemingly random participants, favor no skill over another, and feed the dead to the ice dragons in the sea. Until, when it must've been clear that Loki may've been a mad and fickle ruler but had no apparent designs outside his realm, the ravens came by less often and paid less attention. Oh, they still watched, but not close enough. Not to see when Loki sent winter-song instructions to his tournament contestants, and the defeated Jötnar only played at falling over in death. Not to see that they were ordered to be still and unbreathing as they were carted off, and that when they were tossed into the sea, just below the water they fell instead into a portal that led to some other realm.

For years and years and years, Loki has been secreting his Jötnar throughout the realms – to be quiet and hidden while awaiting further instruction and to multiply. With Loki's roots ensnaring every warrior, he can be in constant communication, can easily shield them from any one's sight from Heimdall to the Nornir, and he can even send them the sensation of cold should they ache too much for home. So they are waiting by the thousands in Vanaheimr's fields, Njördr's keep, the Ironwood's forests, beneath the forges of the Nidavellir, within the palace of Valhalla, at the gates of Niflheimr. They wait by Thviti at Lyngvi and in the Midgardian sea, ready to cut the chains binding Fenrir and Jörmungand and set his monster children loose.

Loki has an army spread across the realms, and it is ready to be unleashed at his slightest signal.

_Too sneaky_ , Thrym keeps scoffing at his plans. _Too slow. They should know we are coming._ But Loki doesn't pay much attention to his ancestors any longer. There is one piece of the plan to which his ancestors in the Casket have not been privy, that Loki has been constantly battling to keep hidden from them. He is tired of being chained to the Casket and its whims. When he brings unthinkable death and destruction upon the realms, it will be because of how the realms rejected and despised _Loki_ , not because of whatever petty, tedious obligations impel his ancestors. Before anything else he will see the Casket destroyed. And then he will rule over chaos and despair under no counsel but his own.

Doing so, however, would not be simple. He had Sleipnir acquired so he can call the Casket, but he doesn't doubt that it would be shielded against his own attacks. When deciding what means to use, Loki had inevitably arrived at the answer that has ever been his bane.

Thor.

Of _course_ gods-be-damned Thor.

But let Thor be tricked into the temple, into destroying the Casket and thinking he's averted Loki's wrath, only to be caught flat-footed while the true Ragnarok descends. And after, if the Casket returns Loki's tongue, so much the better. If it returns his heart, no matter – as if it makes a different where that bitter, impotent thing beats. If he is too entwined with the Casket's fate and it means his death, so be it; his army has orders to attack if they feel that occur. And if nothing happens but Loki is free of the incessant, tormenting voices of his ancestors, then that is more than enough.

Now it is time to reveal what Loki's patience has wrought.

Loki calls for his army on Jötunheimr to assemble into unmistakable ranks, wielding unmistakable weapons. He creates portals before them leading obviously to Midgard. And then, while arranging his own expression into one of strain, he allows the spell that shields all of this from Heimdall's sight to flicker. No sooner than he hides his army again then the Bifröst opens. He can see through his army's eyes Asgard's forces descend, blocking his army's path and bringing the war to Jötunheimr ground. Even leagues away in this underground temple, Loki can hear the first clash of weapons. Asgard has been poised, waiting for Loki's move.

Huginn and Muninn arrive in the temple soon after, fluttering and cawing through the entranceway and coming to rest on tall balusters to either side of the vast hall. Good. That means their king should not be far behind. Everything is falling into place.

And Loki is, frankly, stunned he's going to get away with this.

One hand between Sleipnir's shoulder blades, Loki sings through the ice, _I have a gift._ The ancients stir, murmur, excited, and slowly the Casket forms from between cracks in the ground and merges into being on the pedestal before him.

Sleipnir bucks, trying desperately to break the ice holding him still. Loki moves his hand higher and squeezes Sleipnir's neck, pressing in until Sleipnir stills, only letting out a soft, pained whine. But Sleipnir is strong, even reined in as he is. _Perhaps I should have kept you as my own steed, you filthy beast_ , Loki muses, while the ancients chuckle. 

Huginn and Muninn caw louder, and Loki knows that Thor has arrived before he hears the footsteps echo as Thor descends into the temple and comes to stand opposite Loki, the Casket between them. If he is surprised to see the Casket or Sleipnir, he doesn't reveal it.

“You were not,” Thor says, arms crossed over his chest, “at my coronation.” Loki raises his eyebrows. This was a surprise, was it? “It was unreasonable, I know, but I'd hoped. I spent more time glancing at the rafters to see if a sparrow was watching from the shadows than actually accepting congratulations. Sif smacked me no less than five times for being rudely inattentive. Subtly, of course. It wouldn't do for the King of Asgard's chief personal guard to be seen threatening her king when he hasn't even worn the crown for a full day.”

Thor's fingers tap against Mjölnir, strapped to his belt. _Draw it_ , Loki urges. Thor must know that the Casket powers Jötunheimr. Must know destroying it is the quickest way to end the battle he thinks is the war. Instead Thor says, almost amiably, “You would not believe the amazing gifts I received. The most delicately spun garments, jewel-encrusted jewelry, weapons from the Dwarves so finely crafted I think they made Hogun cry. I know, though, if you were there, what your favorite of all of the treasures would have been. Would you like to know? You don't even have to guess mine.” Thor's gaze flicks up and down Loki's form. “As usual, I hadn't brought my own home yet.”

Loki needs to proceed with the ceremony, begin consigning away Sleipnir's heart. He needs to attack Thor, do something hostile – something to make Thor remember there is a battle and bloodshed outside and there should be the same in this here. 

But...

Loki does want to know.

So he stalls, running his fingers roughly through Sleipnir's mane as he watches Thor through narrowed eyes. Thor nods to Huginn, who takes flight and leaves. 

“It was from the Vanir. When Sveigdir came forward to present his gift, he knelt before me and told me how he'd prayed to be granted the wisdom to choose a fitting gift for Asgard's new king. And that night, he dreamt of a giant, sacred oak tree.”

Loki's fist clenches involuntarily in Sleipnir's mane. No. It must be something else. Thor couldn't have – 

Huginn returns with a satchel carried in his claws, which he drops at Thor's feet before retreating to his perch. “And finding that tree, Sveigdir found his gift. Now,” Thor says, opening the satchel and drawing out a stack of books. “I admit that when I saw my gift was a pile of children's books, I was offended. The warriors and I later agreed that there were simpler means of declaring an intention to rekindle the war between our realms. But I was also, by that point, fairly drunk, as each gift of course required a toast, as did each congratulations.”

Loki is barely listening, just staring, horrified, at the very familiar books Thor holds. Why didn't Loki destroy them? Why leave them for anyone to find?

“I forgot about them for a long time, I admit. There were other things to see to. But when your son over there and I were having another disagreement about whether it's proper to buck off his king when said king is attempting to show off his riding skills to some gathered dignitaries, someone mentioned that I had this book of horses. I quite enjoyed it.” Thor holds up the book in question. One of the ones Loki had barely bothered to skim. “I think we understand one another now, eh, my friend?” Thor says. He walks to Sleipnir, holding out a hand, which Sleipnir immediately nuzzles. Sleipnir makes the first happy noise Loki has heard since bringing him here.

“Now, of the eight, you probably liked this one best,” Thor says, holding up the book Loki had found in Latveria. “Because it was the gloomiest, you see, And the pictures are so shiny.” Thor grins like he's ten years old.

But – wait. Seven. Loki found _seven_ books. Loki lunges to grab them from Thor, who agreeably lets Loki have the stack.

“It reminded me of an evening very long ago, when I still lived and fought on Midgard. I'd been having the strangest dream.”

Only half-listening, Loki tosses the books he recognizes aside until he finds the one he doesn't. On the cover, there's an entwined sun and moon.

“In this dream, I witnessed this great number of hands reaching for something – you know that utter certainty you can have in dreams? When awake you'd question whatever is before you, but you are utterly certain of it? Well, I knew that these hands had part of something that belonged to me, and that they were reaching to take the rest of it. And they _could not have it_. I would not allow it.”

Loki opens to the first page and sees a flowing, stylized drawing of the golden prince. On the prince's chest, two overlapping hearts are drawn, one pale blue and one crimson. Loki brushes his fingers over the page.

_The golden son has a heart of ice._

“I fought them, took back what they'd stolen and what they meant to steal, and when I woke there were tears on my face,” Thor runs two fingers down his cheeks, mimicking the flow, “that I had no memory of shedding, and I was exhausted. But I was also so –” There is wonder in Thor's voice now. “So light. Unbelievably light and strong and adored. And I have since carried this remarkable feeling within me always. But I've been greedy. I didn't know it, but I was greedy.

_Sacrifice of equal value._ If the Casket could not have his heart, what else but Loki's tongue could both cut him off from any other attachment and enslave him to Jötunheimr?

Thor sighs – wearily, mournfully. “I am so sorry, my dear brother. That I have been so blessed at your expense. And that I was foolish enough to doubt you when you swore your heart to me.”

It doesn't matter. It changes nothing. Why would it? And as if Loki would believe his heart would beat strong enough that Thor would even notice its presence. Thor did a quite admirable job ignoring it when it beat under Loki's chest. He flicks dismissively through the page in his hands, sees flickers of the golden, a Jötun king, a relic, crossed swords. Wait. An image of the golden son with a hammer held in his hand, crashing down on the relic. And on the next page, the Jötun king lies dead and still.

Let Thor think he has the answer, and have none for when Loki's army descends. 

“I promised you I would make things right, Loki, and my word is good. And thanks to that book you hold, I may not know how to right everything just yet, but I know how to begin.” Loki watches, delighted, as Thor reaches for Mjölnir. Yes! Destroy it! Let his Ragnarok fall on Thor's well-intentioned shoulders. Thor raises Mjölnir to the temple ceiling, and Loki leans forward, breathless, waiting for the lightening to descend. “Oh,” Thor says. “Not like that. But it gave me the idea.” He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and says, “I, Thor, King of Asgard, consign my heart to Jötunheimr.” 

Loki stares, uncomprehending, as a red mist rises from Thor's pores and begins to slide toward the Casket. 

_No._

No – Thor will not do this. Will not sacrifice himself. No, Loki will not allow it. Loki throws the book aside and dashes forward, too unprepared even to think of using magic, but it's too late. There's a blinding light as the mist reaches the Casket that knocks Loki back, and Thor sighs.

Every last root of Jötunheimr lining Loki's skeleton, following the path of his veins, and curling through the folds of his mind, is flooded with pure light and unbearable sweetness.

Loki falls, mouth open in a soundless scream, arching and writhing on the floor, fingers scratching at his skin. Too hot! Too unbearable hot and sweet!

Distantly, Thor straightens, stands tall and smiles so, so gently. He lowers Mjölnir and presses one hand to his chest. “That's what I thought,” he says, as if Loki is not being consumed by agony. “This is the only one I need.”

He walks to Loki, stands over him. “Loki, it's time to call this off. Call off your army and call off whatever other wickedness you meant to unleash this day. We cannot go on like this. _You_ cannot go on like this.”

Loki drags himself to his knees, shaking uncontrollably, shaking his head no. Tears pour from his eyes, some of them freezing on his blue face, but he's flickering helplessly from Jötun to Aesir, and some of the tears drip to the floor. They keep falling no matter how he wipes and scratches at his face.

“Loki. Call off this war. It is not too late. If you unleash whatever devastation you'd planned, I don't know if I can undo that. But you can stop this. It's not too late, Loki.”

In his head, Loki's ancestors are screaming in agony to match his own, yelling at Loki to loose his army, to strike down this arrogant golden king, or just screaming at the burning beauty defiling their tomb. Loki cannot stop weeping.

Thor kneels before Loki and grabs one of Loki's wrists. Frostbite instantly crawls up Thor's arm, but he holds on tight and somehow fights it, pushing the cold back into Loki and turning Loki's wrist and arm Aesir pale. It goes back and forth like this. Loki's chest rises and falls in rapid, uncontrollable, silent hiccups and gasps. 

“Loki,” Thor grabs instead his face in his hands, and the war between frostbite and burns continues. “Loki, please. I am empty without you. Please, please stop this. I beg of you, don't make me kill you. Please.”

Hand shaking, Loki presses his palm against the floor, as Thor brushes away his endlessly falling tears.

The ancients' voices are drowned out, cannot hope to compete, with the steady thump of Thor's strong, treasured heart.

_Stop_ , Loki calls to every Jötnar from Jötunheimr to Niflheimr. _Lay down your arms. Come home. Your king commands this. There will be no more war._

Thor nods his head to Huginn and Muninn, who caw and take flight. Then he says to Sleipnir, whose icy chains and magicked muzzle Loki had released without realizing, “Go. Help spread the word that there will be no more fighting.” Sleipnir shakes out his mane, flinging away the last of the ice that had gripped him, and gallops off.

Loki slowly brings his hands to wrap around his neck. _Help me._

“Oh, Loki. My brother, my love,” Thor says. “By every oath I could swear, I will.”

Thor leans down and brushes his lips between the tall twisting horns emerging from Loki's forehead. Thor's lip are tinged in frostbite, and then bleed back to red. Loki finally stops resisting what he's wanted to do since Thor knelt before him, and he buries his face in Thor's neck, weeping. And when Thor lifts his arms to embrace him as if Loki will dissolve to nothing if he does not hold tight enough, Loki wraps his arms around Thor just as tight.

* * *

_Then_

“Tell me, is it usual for you to require five straight days of sleep to recover from a grievous wound, or would you have benefited from medical intervention?”

Ah. Loki had wondered when he'd end up in Latveria. He'd anticipated being conscious for the journey, but given what he's gathered from his brief encounters with the infamous Doctor Victor von Doom, perhaps unreasonably so. He stretches slowly, feeling the aches and shadows of another humiliating defeat. Sitting up on the plush bed on which he was resting, he rubs at the almost healed gash on his head, remembering keenly the feel of being thrown head-first through a concrete wall by the charming Hulk. 

Loki studies the generously appointed bedroom they're in. He's somewhat surprised that the armor-clad figure reclining in an armchair by the bed is indeed the doctor and not one of the robots Loki understands the ruler is fond of deploying. Is he underestimating Loki or overestimating himself? It could be either – Loki's knowledge of him is still rough. Although their purposes have not yet crossed paths, their battlefields have a number of times, and in their brief conversations Loki has become intrigued by the strange ruler. Earth, he is learning, is too small for the great creatures it houses, and humans are more intriguing than Loki had previously believed. The trick to appreciating mortals with eyeblink lifespans is simply to endeavor not to blink.

Pulling back the blankets, Loki sits at the edge of the bed and faces the doctor. With another stretch, he shifts, and at the doctor's hand gripping the armrest minutely tighter before relaxing, Loki knows he understands this much, at least.

“Perhaps you might refrain from insulting us both and skip this part of our acquaintance,” von Doom says, bored and disappointed.

“Oh? Which part is that?”

“The part,” von Doom says, gesturing to Loki's shapely, naked female form, “where you attempt to gain some tedious hold over me through sexual overtures. That's not why you're here. And lovelier women than you have tried.”

Smiling and slinking over to the doctor, Loki places his fingers under von Doom's masked chin and guides his face to turn to hers. “Is that what you think I'm doing?”

“Is it not?”

Loki explores the ridges of von Doom's steel mask. “I have been watching you as you have been watching me. You react differently when I'm in this form as opposed to my male one.”

“That's even more disappointing than you seducing your way into my good graces. Do you truly believe that I would be kinder or regard you as less deadly because you're female?”

“What I think,” Loki says, “is that at one point in your life there was a lovely, dark-haired woman, and that whenever you look at me, you will never not see her first. And when you eventually turn on me – be it in one day or in one hundred years – in that split second when you mistake me for her,” Loki brushes a fingertip over the mask's metal lips, “that is when I'll skin you.”

After a moment of consideration, von Doom says, “And why reveal your hand to me so early? At all?”

“Because otherwise you might not have enough time to appreciate that there is nothing you can do to prevent it.”

Von Doom barks a sharp, harsh laugh. He takes Loki's hand as he stands and brushes her knuckles with his cold metal lips. “You, my dear, are welcome in my home for as long as your heart desires.”

Hah. Thor is not the only one allowed to acquire intriguing mortal allies.

From that day forward, whenever Loki requires a place to nurse his wounds and does not care to exert the effort required to slip to another realm, he finds sanctuary in Latveria. Usually von Doom leaves Loki to her own devices, but occasionally at first and then with greater frequency he invites her to dine with him.

At their first shared dinner, as the robot that sits across from her starts jerking and then falls over, motionless, Loki says to the ceiling, “If we must skip over the seduction, you can hardly ask me to also skip over the poisoning.” Von Doom's laugh echoes in the hallways.

At their fourth shared dinner, Loki chooses to ignore the robot and she instead flicks her wrist as she experiments with nail colors and patterns. Blue with daggers, yellow with spiders, purple with snakes. With each flick, a different design bleeds over. This is hardly the sort of thing she'd waste her time with back ho – back on Asgard. But the humans do seem to appreciate flash, and Loki cannot help but preen under the unaccustomed attention. She has even begun collecting newspaper articles with flattering photographs of herself. She also has a few featuring the Avengers. Well, featuring Thor. But only so can she hang up his picture and throw knives at his face.

“What are you doing?” the robot asks in von Doom's slow and precise voice. Does he honestly think she doesn't know the real one is one of the three standing against the back wall?

“Entertaining myself,” she says. The robot nods slowly, and then three of them are pinning Loki and attempting to pry off her fingernails while lecturing her for being so vapid. The robots manage to pry off two before Loki gets a hand around the real von Doom's neck and begins to squeeze, crushing the metal inward, streams of green magic flowing from her hand to wrap around the armor and press it inward at all points.

A robot has one of her nails pulled back, and Loki is closing her fist by degrees, when von Doom says, “Enough,” and the robots back away. He crosses his arms over his chest while Loki continues to press ever, ever more. 

“I invited you to my home, to my company, because I believed you were above the pettiness by which I am otherwise surrounded,” von Doom says, the barest pain roughening his words.

“And I accepted because I believed you to be wise, and yet wise men know better than to tell me how to pass my own time. Are you a wise man, Victor von Doom?”

“You have no idea, my dear Loki,” he answers. Loki smiles and graciously releases him. Von Doom takes her hand and brushes a metal kiss against her knuckles. “Green and black,” he says. 

Gesturing to her green and black garb and then to von Doom's own, Loki says, “Rather unoriginal, wouldn't you say?”

“And you're not?”

“My goodness,” Loki says. “Are you trying to upset me? Remind me how that worked out for you just now?”

“No insult meant,” von Doom says. “I have simply not yet ruled out the possibility that you are one of the mutants from Westchester who has an unhealthy obsession with Norse mythology.”

“Mythology?” Loki repeats.

“Did you not know you're a myth? Earth is quite fascinated with you – or, perhaps, with whom you believe you are. There are numerous volumes on you. I myself have an impressive collection in the library, if you'd care to indulge your vanity. I found they were not much help with my research, I fear. Childish stories. Uncouth.”

A collection of stories about Loki. No doubt a plethora of ridiculous and insulting rumors await her if she cared to read them. She says, “So tell me. What proof would you require to be convinced that I am very much real?”

“That is the beauty of it. You _cannot_ convince me. But I will enjoy very much witnessing your attempts.”

Oh, Loki likes this one.

* * *

Although Loki may have always been pleased to call herself a skilled liar, a mischief-maker, untamed and wild, she'd never particularly thought of herself as wicked. But the longer she spends on Midgard – the longer _Thor_ spends in the company of mortals, in the company of Jane – the better Loki wears the title. Jane. She's why Loki is always female around Victor and why Loki only ever leaves her battles defeated. Because that day, moments before the Hulk threw her through a wall, she'd been standing over Jane, staff held high, ready to strike and no one in range to stop her. Jane had been kneeling, shaking, hands over her face in a futile attempt to protect herself. But the wind – from the city, the falling building, Loki's own power – had twisted her gold hair into perfect, bouncing corkscrews, and for one crucial moment Loki had hesitated. 

Years later, Loki will still like Victor, but will unfortunately be too acquainted with his character flaws for the sentiment to be unequivocal. She's never anticipated their tolerating one another for so long. Or for Thor to tolerate this realm still. Sprawled across an armchair, Loki disinterestedly watches Victor pace the confines of his study. She is barely listening to Victor drone on about how Loki had ruined his plans by becoming bored and changing her own part of the plan half-way through without telling him, and how seriously she's set back his current schemes. 

“You assured me you could keep them distracted. How strange that you would interpret that to mean playing some harmless prank and then vanishing.”

Loki pointedly studies her nails, changing colors and patterns, knowing how it still grates on Victor. Knowing that he won't ever again comment on it.

Besides, Loki _had_ been distracting them. It had been going quite well, too, but she'd noticed something and she is still unsure if it is a new development or one that she'd somehow failed to notice.

Thor is an Avenger.

That is, of course he'd been fighting alongside those humans for ages, and courting that silly scientist, and following the one-eyed mother hen's orders. But Loki knows there was always a tension between them, an otherness that separated Thor from them. Loki wouldn't give enough credit to the humans to think that they'd recognized that otherness for the superiority it is, but they recognized something.

But today, as Loki had brought madness and chaos to their beloved city while Victor went about his own secret infiltrations – Loki hadn't been paying particular attention when Victor had detailed what those were – Loki noticed how Thor moved among his allies. How he gripped the soldier's arm to pull him up when he'd fallen, how he brushed close enough to the Iron Man to touch when they few through the sky, how easily he stood back-to-back with the Hulk. No hesitation, no distance, and all in the carelessly familiar way Thor had touched his warriors three and Sif.

And, at one time, Loki.

Is there no aspect of their relationship – as brothers, as friends, as lovers – that Thor hasn't found replacement for on Midgard? And so readily?

At that point, Loki _may_ have briefly forgotten what she'd been trying to accomplish, and may have instead in a fit of pique set Thor on fire. 

_Burn_ , Loki had thought furiously and then left, disinterested in continuing this farce. Likely Thor's Avengers had doused the flames the moment Loki was gone, but maybe not. Maybe Loki's fire burned Thor to ash, and then it will be in the newspapers, and Loki will add that article to her collection. And then...

Well, that _is_ the question, isn't it? She flicks her wrist, and her nails wash in bright, shining gold.

Victor walks behind the armchair and taps Loki's head with his fist. “I fear,” he says sternly, “That you take our endeavors less seriously than you originally led me to believe. I should hate to think I have to question your allegiance. It is disappointing enough that Namor has turned traitor to us.”

As if Loki hadn't warned him about trusting arrogant fish. Abruptly in no mood to tolerate this tediousness, Loki wipes all color from her nails, stands and leaves, unconcerned that Victor is mid-word. 

Victor follows her through the hallways, of course, still lecturing on and on. Something about how tolerant he usually is of Loki's frequent disappearances, her long-spanned plans for which she has little patience to see through, her fickleness, her this and that – but not when her shortcomings meddle with his own affairs. When it's clear that Victor has no intention of quieting or of ceasing to follow her, Loki ducks into the first room she comes to, which a quick glance reveals to be the library. She's never actually been inside – usually when here she is too busy stemming her bleeding or sleeping off her injuries, and when recovered she dines with Victor and then leaves. She believes Victor appreciates someone who knows how not to overstay her welcome. With a quiet word and flick of one hand, the doors slam in Victor's face. Another word and those doors and all others leading into the library are locked. Rune words glow briefly along the door's seam as Victor attempts the handle.

Calmly – for nothing but the stretchy scientist ever rattles him – Victor says through the wood, “You are being purposefully unreasonable to irritate me.”

Loki answers, “Only in equal measure to how you bore me, darling.”

Victor walks away without another word, no doubt to remind Loki that he has better things to do than pander to her “tantrums.” Loki wanders through the stacks of the vast library, occasionally passing servants unlucky enough to be on this side of the doors when Loki locked them. They still at the sight of her but are ever expressionless. The few times Loki ventured into this country's streets, she'd found a people enamored by their charismatic leader. In the castle, though, that adoration seems to have transformed into an unthinking obedience. An internal tension between loyalty and horror at what actually takes place within these walls. They would bash each other's skulls in with books for Loki's amusement if she ordered it. May even find relief in the order. They live locked in an existence only relatively larger than the library, and with – Loki will admit – an even greater madman than herself.

As Loki glances around the tall stacks, an old memory surfaces – something Victor had once mentioned. Loki beckons one of the servants forward, who approaches with a resigned set to his jaw.

“Tell me,” she says. “If I wish to indulge my vanity, to what section would you point me?”

The servant dutifully leads the way and is quick to disappear when she dismisses him. Victor had not been exaggerating about his collection. Loki runs her fingers over various titles, flipping through a few. She knows that tales of her exploits had traveled far, but to have them laid out like this, see the pictures that don't quite capture her features and the tales that touch upon but don't quite epitomize the truth. Intriguing creatures, these humans.

Her fingers pause on one book, and she frowns. This isn't human in origin. She takes the book off of the shelf and studies the cover. Vanir, almost certainly. _And what have you been up to, Victor, to have this in your collection?_ She turns to the first page, studying the flowing illustration of a glowing box held by a great, monstrous figure with deep red eyes. No words, but the image stirs something in her. She brushes her fingers against the drawing and is startled when she thinks and hears and knows,

_The ice giant king is so feared because he has no heart._

Loki spends hours in the library that day, reading and rereading and rereading, running her fingers across the pages over and over and over.

By the time evening falls and a servant approaches to invite her to dine with Victor, a plan has already begun to form in Loki's mind. She feels a chill creep down her spine, as if Jotunheimr itself is calling to her. As if she's already there.

"Give Victor my regrets," she says. 

Although he's never mentioned, a boy stands often by the side of the golden king. Loki cannot help gently tracing her fingers over the face of the beloved golden son. But he has no speaking part in this tale, and so no words come unbidden to her mind to reveal what he thinks of it all.


	6. Epilogue

_Later_

Loki never regains the ability to speak, but he does eventually find his voice.

He tries every so often to recover the ability – checks on Midgard's technological advancements, negotiates and argues with his ancestors in the Casket. Each time Thor assures him that all of history knows Loki's voice, even if he cannot speak, and each time Loki lets himself be persuaded. Thor is a much more effectual arguer these years.

Loki finds other ways of communication. Since the Jötnar can hear some facsimile of his voice, Loki sets about finding an adequate translator. After testing and rejecting dozens over the years, he settles on a bright Jötun named Kaldgrani. Kaldgrani, after being buried under stacks of dictionaries, thesauruses, and assorted language text books and bid to know them all, is rather adept at translating Loki's winter-song into the All-Tongue. After years of practice, it is almost like being able to speak. 

Since in other realms there is no Jötunheimr ice through which to speak, Loki must be in physical contact with Kaldgrani to communicate. Usually a hand on Kaldgrani's shoulder is sufficient. Sometimes when he is trying to distract Thor enough to negotiate more agreeable terms or to win an argument, Loki will hold Kaldgrani's hand. Once he had the translator place his hand on the small of Loki's back under his shirts, and Thor had dismissed the translator, told Loki never to let that happen again, and then attempted to ravish Loki into some sort of sated compliance. A better arguer, yes, but still clumsy with incentives. 

Kaldgrani happens to be one of the tallest Jötnar in the realm, and is eye-to-eye with Loki when seated. He's seated now beside Loki, ever patient, as Loki points stubbornly to the globe that is on a pedestal between him and Thor. They are in one of Thor's studies, as when they meet in Asgard's throne room there tend to be witnesses, and Thor has made clear he's tired of the subsequent ribbing from his guards.

There is no humor on Thor's face when he says, “I will absolutely not allow you to claim Antarctica as a territory of Jötunheimr.”

Kaldgrani listens and then says, “Loki-king wishes to understand your exact objections.” Loki is pleased with Kaldgrani's deep, rumbling voice. Such authority. 

“My _objections_? I can't have Jötnar settling on Midgard! Do I even have to explain why? And no, it doesn't matter that they are your offspring.”

“Loki-king wishes to know, then, why his husband's bastard offspring are permitted to populate Midgard, while his own are not.”

Thor rubs his temples with his fingers. It's taken them nearly an hour to even reach this point in the argument. “ _Because_ my children's children are human,” Thor says. “They belong in that realm. And what do you mean your offspring aren't permitted in Midgard? You have the ocean! Jörmungand occupies the _entire Midgardian ocean_! There is more ocean than land.”

Oh, Thor. Loki could do this for days and never tire. “Loki-king is startled to hear that this king of Asgard is so obviously less generous than the previous one.”

“Less – I am not less generous! I just know you too well. I give you Antarctica and the next demand from you is for – for –” Thor gestures, obviously trying to recall Midgardian geography. “For Canada! I forbid this. You may not have Antarctica, and you may not have Canada. I cannot even image what mischief your sons would cause.”

“Loki-king is aghast,” Kaldgrani rumbles, “that you would assume his Jötnar offspring and their mates would inevitably cause any mischief in their new realm.”

“Loki! Of _course_ there would be mischief and complications and disasters. Do you honestly think there would be no consequences to this arrangement? And I could hardly leave it to Midgard to solve them. I would have to –” Thor stops abruptly, mouth working silently for a moment. Loki raises his eyebrows. It took him long enough. “ _I_ would have to go. It would be my personal responsibility to intervene.”

“Loki-king supposes that as this would be an altercation between different realms, it would indeed fall on the All-Father to settle it,” Kaldgrani says, while Loki turns his head away and scoffs. What a thick oaf Loki's beloved is. A king of Asgard is not as free to travel and adventure as a golden son, nor as free to so obviously favor one realm over another. So Thor's opportunities to visit his and Jane's descendants – now great great grandchildren, Loki believes, or to check up on this generation's Avengers, or to pay respects to the Midgardian warriors he once fought beside and served, are rare. Trust Thor not to recognize a gift until Loki spells it out in triplicate. As if any Jötun actually wants to live in the dull, mortal realm! What Loki had had to bribe them with!

While Thor stares at him in stunned wonder, Loki snaps his fingers and gestures to Kaldgrani, who dutifully holds out the scroll he's been carrying.

“Loki-king has devised a treaty detailing the boundaries and conditions of the Jötnar occupation of Antarctica for your consideration, All-Father. If it meets approval, Loki-king is prepared to reopen negotiations and renew the treaty with the people of Antarctica once every one hundred years.”

“Loki – there is no 'people of Antarctica'!”

“Then Loki-king fails to understand precisely whom would object.” Now that they share a purpose, Loki imagines it will be at most five years before Thor concedes.

“And what else does Loki-king demand while we're at it? Yggdrasil itself? That one you'll have to argue with the Nornir. I want no part of it.”

“Loki-king demands just the sun,” Kaldgrani says. It's always Loki's final demand, a signal that it is time for negotiations to end. That Loki desires Thor stand before him and not the All-Father. Kaldgrani, aware of procedure, nevertheless waits for Loki's dismissal before unfolding to his true height and taking his leave.

Thor moves to stand in front of Loki, hands resting easily at Loki's waist. He nips playfully at Loki's lips and says, “How thoughtful my wicked husband is.” Loki smiles and nuzzles Thor's cheek with his nose. “But you realize that I cannot allow it?”

_We will see._

“I can't,” Thor protests. 

_Of course not, beloved._

It is like this, sometimes, conversations where Thor seems able to hear Loki's thoughts precisely. Thor swears that he cannot, that he merely knows Loki too well, but Loki wonders – Thor's heart and Loki's tongue locked in the same buried relic...

“But,” Thor says hesitantly. “If I did. Your children – they wouldn't cause actual harm, would they? No death. Just ... pretend?” 

_Knowing my children, it will be all flash and no fire._

“Hmmm,” Thor says, and Loki mentally revises his estimate down to one year.

The path to reach this place was difficult – good decades and bad. Loki has had centuries to make amends and has centuries yet to go. He has had to relearn how to respond with cunning rather than blunt force. Has had to learn how to build bridges between his realm and the others. The tournaments help – Loki opens them to contestants from other realms, on Thor's condition that there be no death. Jötunheimr balked at being remade into a less war-hungry realm. But while the Jötnar are not used to a kind king, they find satisfaction with a kind king who nevertheless kills any that object to a kinder rule.

“That is not how a king rules,” Thor had tried to protest, but without any prompting on Loki's part, Kaldgrani had replied, “That is how a Jötnar king rules.” 

Loki will never be truly whole, nor truly content – the Nornir decreed when time began that that is not the God of Mischief's lot – but with Thor's heart ever beating in his ears, Loki is never again empty nor cold. 

Thor guides Loki's lips to his. As they kiss, sweetly and with equal passion, there is not so much as a thread of gossamer-thin cloth between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Comments / critiques / pointing out of typos / whatevs all welcome and very appreciated! :D


End file.
